Hi! It's professor Ryan from NightsAround a Table.
What is a workerplacement game? Today on (singing) Board Games 101! Ifyou're new to modern board games, you're gonna hear that term “worker placement” alot, because it's a very very popular board game mechanic.
And if you're not surewhat i mean by “board game mechanic, ” make sure to check out my What is a BoardGame Mechanic video, which is a prerequisite for this course.
So i havehere a lovely little worker placement game.
This is what it looks like.
This isthe common board, and each player gets a pawn.
And there are gonna be point valueson the board.
So we're gonna have one, two, three, and four.
The way it's gonna workis that everybody gets a turn, and on your turn, you're gonna take your pawnand you're gonna place it on one of these spots , and the points you get arewritten right on the spot.
So – i know – it'srudimentary, but let's play it out.
So theblue player, just by random draw gets to go first, and the blue player decides4 is probably the best place to go, so blue player goes on 4.
And then thered player also chooses 4.
maybe not that familiar with board games, has made a tactical decision, and has chosen 1 for whatever reason, but then yellow player also decides that4 is the best bet.
And that's the endof the game.
So what we have is athree-way tie with 4 points, and poor green over here has only scored 1point.
But that's okay, green.
You'll get'em next time.
That is, in essence, how aworker placement game works.
And you say”Well how could this be popular at all? Rhis looks really reallydumb and basic and simple, and why.
why wouldn't everybody just choose 4?” andyou're absolutely right: there's no reason why you wouldn't choose the bestscoring spot.
So then designers workingwith this concept think “Okay: we've got to put, maybe, a little more parameters tomake it a little bit more interesting.
Solet's reset all of the pawns, and this time out the rule is now that each spacecan only hold one pawn.
So let's playthat out.
Again, by random draw, blue getsto go first, and blue chooses 4.
That'sthe best spot on the board.
Red is unableto choose 4 and choses three, and then green, still making questionable lifedecisions, chooses 1, and yellow picks 2, and that's the end of the game, andblue wins.
So blue definitely had anadvantage being the first player in our worker placement game.
It's still not avery good or interesting game.
Nobody hasinteresting choices to make, really.
Inorder to make this more of a game, or more of an interesting game, you're gonnahave to start putting more rules around it, and you're gonna have to startabstracting those scores away so that instead of collecting straight-up pointsmaybe you're collecting or doing things that move you closer towards points? Maybe you split it up so that there area bunch of different tasks that you need to do, and by slowly, incrementallycompleting those tasks, those tasks translate into points.
And the reason imention this is because if you're new to modern board games, you may look at aworker placement game and think “Why is it so complicated? Why is the rule book15 pages long? Why do i have to learn allthis stuff?” But hopefully from thisdemonstration, you'll see that unless there are sort of a bunch of rules, andunless your final goal is abstracted a little bit, it's not a very interestinggame at all.
And that's why when you pullone of these off the shelf, and you see there's all kinds of stuff going on, that's the reason :a worker placement game sort of needs a whole pile of rulesto make it interesting and fun! Theming.
So you wonder why it's called a “workerplacement” game? Well, in many workerplacement games, the pawns are actually represented by humanoid workercharacters, and the things they're doing are completing tasks or job-like things.
So if we were to theme something likethis, maybe we say well, it's gonna be a waste management game, so we're gonnaaward points based on the heaviest kind of refuse that these workers pull away.
So we're gonna replace the pawns withlittle.
little people-like things instead of just abstract pawns, and the thingsthat they're doing are: big points, we're going to be pulling big sofas off of people'scurb sides.
And then for slightly fewer points, we'regonna be collecting the big black garbage bags.
Then over here, this isgonna be the collecting recycling spot, and then down here, the organics spot, which is worth the least amount of points, maybe because it's the lightest load fora worker to carry? That's why it's calleda worker placement game, because very many times, it's.
there are a lot of thesegames that are about farming.
getting a job done.
Now, because who goes first isobviously really important in a worker placement game, what you'll see isdesigners will kind of sweeten the pot by saying that if you take one of thespots that may be less favored by other players, you get to go first.
So now, itmight make a little bit more sense if, you know, the red player picks this spotbecause the red player is going first, and maybe the blue player picks thesecond-best spot.
green player who has always been picking the first spot, or the spotthat gets you 1 point, goes there, and yellow player goes here, and that mightlook like a bad move for the green worker, but if there are multiple roundsin the game, well, next time green player gets to go first, and picks the couchspot! And you can imagine what this gamewould look like if it was more complex.
If instead of just four spots, you had abunch of different spots that you can choose from.
And instead of just one pawnthat you could place on a spot, you had multiple different pawns that you couldplace on a spot.
So if you're brand newto this kind of game and you'd like to try one out for yourself, i highlyrecommend worker placement games.
Theyare one of my favorite style of games to play.
And i know a lot of you chimed inin the comments section and told me that worker placement games were yourfavorites as well.
So for new players, ifyou'd like to try it out, BoardGameGeek, which is kind of like the Internet MovieDatabase of board games, tells us that one of the original, if not the original, worker placement game was called Keydom, and that was by a family of board gamecreators who came up with Keydom, and unfortunately, it was a small printthing, and it sold out.
It's out of print.
But hedid a whole series of games, and one of his best-known ones is called Keyflower.
It's fantastic! It's a worker placementgame with an auction mechanic folded into the mix.
i really like it.
Maybe alittle bit too hairy for a beginner, so if you want more of a.
anease in, dip your toe into the pool kind of thing, i can recommend Lords ofWaterdeep.
Now, if you see the cover of Lordsof Waterdeep, it's gonna call it a Dungeons & Dragons game, but don't bescared off by that.
It's not a classicrole-playing game.
It's a workerplacement game that's themed with Dungeons & Dragons-y kind of stuff.
Ifyou want to dive right into the deep end and play a game that's sort of more of agamer's game that's also a worker placement mechanic, i recommendAgricola! It's a fantastic workerplacement game.
The theme is extremely boring.
You'rethinking “Why am i gonna spend my Friday night playing a game about subsistencefarming in the 1600s?” Get past the themebecause who cares? The animals are adorable, it's reallyreally fun, and really really thinky, and i think that you'll have a good timewith it.
Now, board game design and gamedesign, sort of, in general, is an ever-evolvingart form, and what a lot of designers have done is they've kind of remixed orcome up with different variations on a theme with this style of mechanic.
Soi'll mention two more games that use a worker placement mechanic in unique andoriginal ways.
One of them is called Village, where you havepawns, and you're placing them in different spots in amedieval village, but all of the spots have cubes on them, and when you pick aspot, you're taking a cube away from the spot.
And that's a hallmark of a workerplacement game: there are a limited number of spots to take, and players arekind of fighting each other or jockeying for position for an increasinglydwindling number of spots.
In Village, placing the worker, or the villager, is actually kind of optional.
It's takingthe cube away from the spot that's the main action.
It's just an interestingtwist.
Another one is called Tzolk'in: TheMayan Calendar, and in that one, you're placing workers on a rondel which isanother game mechanic that we'll talk about in one of these videos, and you'reremoving your workers from these circles, and the longer you let them ride thecircles – the circles turn every single round, and the prizes get better andbetter, and you stand to get richer the longer you wait letting your workride around these little conveyor belts, or circles.
All great games, all worthchecking out, all using a worker placement mechanic.
If you're sort ofslumming it watching this video and you already know all about worker placementgames, tell me: what is your favorite worker placement game? Leave me a commentin the section below, or tell me on Discord.
But if your favorite is a diceworker placement game, mine is too.
Don'ttell me that, because that's going to be a completely separate video! See you nexttime on (singing) Board Games 101! Nights Around a Yable is the only place youcan earn your pH B in board games.
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