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Board games with emergent complexity? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/boardgames@sopuli.xyz
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Some games are complicated - they have really complex rules. Examples of this are games where you have to track many different types of tokens, with different rules for each.

Other games have really simple rules, but still manage to produce extreme complexity in they way they are played.

Go is the perfect example of this. It literally has 2-3 rules, but because you can play anywhere, the complexity it can produce is wide and deep, to the point that tomes have been written on how to play it.

What other boardgames exist that have very simple rules, but produce complex and interesting game play?

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[–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

You might find this project interesting: https://ludii.games/

There are some papers related to complexity. https://ludii.games/references.php

And I believe the game engine contains some mechanism to quantify complexity of different game systems.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Oh, that is cool!

    Has anyone tried ranking well known games with those quantifications?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    I recall that the client display some complexity nummer for every game you play. Unfortunately, I don't have computer access ATM so I'm not able to run the Java app (it's probably doable on Android, but meh..). I believe most of the worlds abstract strategy games are in the database/library, so you can just check them out.

    I also found this: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/284017/estimating-abstract-game-complexity-using-ludii

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Cool. Those results (especially Go and Backgammon) make me think that what I'm looking for is mostly related to the branching factor..

    Would be interesting to find some non-abstract games with a large branching factor..

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    It might also be interesting to plot complexity/branching over time. Since you mention emergent complexity. Also, one might want to do some intelligent filtering or compression when it comes to branching so that it doesn't account for too irrelevant moves.

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