The Root of the Familiarity Problem
Without a regular group, is Root worth the effort?
My first play of Root was a bad one. I was the Woodland Alliance (I'm a Marxist, yo, and I think the person teaching us the game figured that that would appeal) and there was one other newbie (my girlfriend, Tricia, playing The Eyrie), while the teacher and our fourth player had played once or twice before. The teacher took the Marquise and the other "veteran" took the Vagabond. As usual, most of the game for the Eyrie was figuring out how not to fail the Decree, while most of the game for the Alliance was figuring out how to make the cards and, thus, Supporters, work to my advantage. The Marquise stumbled along (this was long before the rules tweaks), bashing heads with the birds, while I tried to erect something useful in the SW corner. Eventually, the Vagabond won because, also like usual, he was playing his own game in the hypothetical corner of the Woodland and no one thought to stop him before he'd finished half the quest deck. Neither Tricia nor I had any idea if we liked the game.
I played a couple more times, under some duress, and eventually discovered some of the beauty behind the mechanics and the genuine viciousness that embodies successful play and which, of course, utterly belies the cutesy animal theme that drew in so many people that would normally never even glance at anything resembling a Dudes on a Map game and their associated piles of troops. So, like most people, after repeated plays I "got it." Root, for me, had gone from wondering what all the fuss was about (like the continued mystery of, say, Wingspan) to a realization that this was really an interesting approach to a well-worn genre of game. It was something I wanted to try again and again, either playing different factions or even sticking to one and trying different angles with it. (The last time I played the Eyrie, I started with the Builder because I had some great crafting cards and proceeded to create an even bigger early-game scoring snowball than the birds usually achieve.) There's a lot to discover in the game, even for regular players.
Howevah, the best way to illuminate said discoveries is to do so with experienced players and, in most cases, not just experienced, but the same experienced players. Root is not a newb-friendly design. It is the current standard-bearer for "asymmetric play." I've seen the latter label applied erroneously to many other games where people have "variable player powers." It's not the same thing. As opposed to the clans in Rising Sun simply having different special abilities, the factions in Root function differently. It's arguable to suggest that they're not even playing the same game; similar to Leder Games' previous release, Vast. To play Root well, you not only have to be familiar with your faction, but you also have to know (potentially) how the other seven operate, as well. Barring that scenario, you're going to have players with such different ability levels in the game that at least one other player will have a significant advantage and one or more will have no idea what's going on before it suddenly ends. My first game was a pristine example of this.
Root is a game for which, to unlock the full experience, you essentially need a regular play group, which I've discovered to my chagrin is an increasingly rare thing in recent years, despite what all the videos on YouTube will show you. It rewards awareness of strategy and awareness of opponents' playstyles like any other game will. But the required knowledge to even get to that level of consideration is far more than most other games you'll encounter. This is the drawback of "asymmetric gameplay", as you as a group will have to grow through the phases of considering this or that faction to be over-powered or weak, before you consider a wholly different one to be offenders in either/both of those categories next week. You'll have to grow through the initial, simple strategies (i.e. Attempt to bitterly retain every clearing with the Marquise, before realizing it's better to withdraw and consolidate and then hit back at the Eyrie and the Alliance when they overextend, etc.) before moving on to more considered and/or subtle ones. But then you'll have to realize that what works against one combination of opponents may only have worked because of those opponents. All games go through this period of comprehension, but not all of them are in the position where you almost have to relearn to play every time you try a new faction or place such a burden on new players, who will rarely be able to step out of the role of semi-roadblock to the rest of the game's function.
I watched one of Quackalope's videos while waiting for the Underworld expansion of the game to arrive and found myself to be genuinely envious when he casually mentioned "the last few times we've played this" to his partners on the show. It was clear that they'd played together many times and had reached the point where many aspects of the various factions were second nature to them. I think the inability of that sense of familiarity to develop for most players with Root is the game's one significant failing. It's still wildly popular and critically hailed, but it's unusual to see that many accolades rain from the sky when the design violates an increasingly prominent aspect in our little niche: accessibility. If you don't have that regular group, you're often teaching new people how to play the game. But there's really no way to separate the design from the necessary learning curve. There are occasional games that will present a "Loved it from the very first play!" scenario, in the same way that most games are better with increased plays and increased knowledge on the part of the players. But there aren't many that seemingly demand it in order to be successful. It's a credit to Leder Games' approach that they were willing to stick to their initial design principle borrowed from their somewhat-but-not-hugely successful Vast and run the risk of releasing a game that many people have considered impressive, but still unsuitable for their play habits, time, or group. That's a design approach determined to do something different and, in fact, wildly succeeding, even if it implicitly excludes a large segment of, again, our little niche hobby audience because they simply won't be able to access the game's true beauty often enough to make it worthwhile.
I'm a Root fan. I love the game. I desperately want to play it more often. But I find it an odd quirk that the most heralded game of the last couple years essentially can't reach its full potential with most groups unless those groups can devote an extended, regular period of time to it. Or maybe I just hang around too many Euro players...
To begin, I pretty much agree with your assessment.
BUT, I think Root comes as close to being accessible despite these things as you can. Play time is short. The player aid is really good at taking you through even unfamiliar factions step by step. The shared rules are pretty simple. Most of the factions strategywise have a pretty succinct and intutive inital explanation. Despite all the complications, the game is a VP race that you can watch occur on the board.
To me, I think that's why it has been popular despite completely agreeing that the real meat is in playing it a number of times against similarly experienced opponents.
Absolutely agree. I think Leder did a really good job of breaking down how the game functions in their player aids. The experience that I've had with new players is that they're kind of lost in the descriptions of factions. You know how with more symmetrical games you can pick up rules tips from other people's questions? In Root, you often can't because explaining to the Eyrie player how to work the Decree has nothing to do with how the WA spread Sympathy. So that "extra" teaching time that often occurs during play is lost on a lot of players who are still trying to figure out how their unique faction works.
"Do I have to be concerned about that cluster of Goat cultists over there if he gains Frenzy? Or will he go for the implicit power boost of Thousand Young, suddenly flooding the map? What if he picks Ghroth...? Wait. No one ever uses Ghroth."
sigh... I've still only played Lords of Hellas once. I want to play again, but just haven't been able to manage it.
Part of that may be random chance, but part of it may also be the fact that I end up playing a lot of games with new players, who tend to do, um... odd things sometimes. But those odd things can still sometimes work!
I try to get the game going as quickly as possible, with the cat taking the first turn and basically having to coach people through their first turn or two- there really isn't any way around it. It's far preferable to 5-10 minute explanation _per player_ when they don't even have any context for what they can do yet anyway. You have to be ready to stop and answer questions at any time, but I've gotten my "play a 4-player game with 3 newbies" time down to just under 2 hours, set-up and all.
My 3 player games with experienced players are typically 45-60 minutes now, 4 player games a little longer.
Needless to say it wasn’t a very satisfying experience.
I think it would be amazing to have a Root group similar to a Twilight Imperium group I play with. All veterans with our 6-player games usually only lasting between 3.5 to 5 hours.
I’m attempting to get a regular group up and running, so hopefully that will pan out. A man can dream...
And while the base rules are very easy, once you throw in the faction specific rules it can present a steep learning curve. The good thing is that the game is relatively short, and from what I've seen most people learn at a rather geometric rate- not just their own faction but what the other factions can do as well. I think part of the learning curve is that the game doesn't rely on traditional mechanics - some people have trouble grasping novel stuff like this.
Its an interesting dilemma - how do you separate difficulty from "novelty" when describing a game's complexity ?
Msample wrote: Its an interesting dilemma - how do you separate difficulty from "novelty" when describing a game's complexity ?
I think that's a big part of it and it was definitely an issue in my first experience. I had never played Vast and most of the other "asymmetrical" games that I'd played (like Chaos in the Old World) were still not at the level of Root. I was sitting there thinking: "This is a DoaM... but not like anything I've played before." But when you get down to it, the mechanics aren't really that complex. They're just different.
But, yeah, no. You're just closer to winning the game. I'll usually try to follow up with a story about how I've won more than once by holding on to some key crafting cards and then suddenly bursting forth with them in the last turn for 5 points or something like that. Then they look at their cards and you can see the light bulb go on.
On the novelty vs. complexity scale, another game that comes to mind is Tragedy Looper. It's not really that complicated, but it's generally unlike anything anyone has played, and dozing off at any point during the explanation can cause some serious belly-aching later. It being one v. many makes that problem even worse. That's why I like 2 player Tragedy Looper the best, but I may never play it again...