3235: Types of Board Game

Types of Board Game

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Title text: I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion.

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Explanation

This is one of 66 incomplete explanations: This page was created by the official candle-lighter of the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

There are a lot of different types of board games in the world. Some are very simple, some are very complicated. This comic illustrates various types, with rather extreme examples.

Boring	This is a very simplistic and boring board game style, where the players simply move around the board at the dictates of chance. The simplest examples (such as Snakes and Ladders, Mouse Trap, and Candy Land) involve no player choices at all, can get frustrating when dice rolls don't want to line up late in the game, and are thus viewed as boring, at least for adults. Pachisi variants (like Ludo) also fall into this structure while still needing some amount of skill and strategy, but it may feel frustratingly difficult to influence the outcome. It is unclear whether the described game has no end condition at all or whether it is so dull that the group involved are unable to complete it without getting bored and giving up.
Abstract	This board game has more abstract tones, involving the arrangement of geometric shapes for reasons that may not be immediately clear, perhaps similar to something like Hive or Tantrix. Some people may find that this kind of game, without a relatable framing they can use as a starting point for understanding it, is quite hard to get to grips with.
Hyperspecific Theme	This board game has a weirdly specific backstory, being centred around a very specific historical event, and a specific task within that. Lengthy backstories that have to be explained before you get to the actual gameplay can feel contrived and be off-putting to some players, but can be an attempt to contextualize gameplay that might otherwise fall into the Abstract category. The Congress of Vienna was a gathering of diplomats from many different countries at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. There exists multiple actual board games about the Congress of Vienna, but they have nothing to do with lighting candles yet.
Overcomplicated	Twilight Imperium is widely regarded as being an extremely complex board game (despite "only" having a weight rating of 3.46 on Board Game Geek). Cones of Dunshire is a joke board game (first shown on the TV show Parks and Recreation), but was eventually turned into a real game where its extreme complexity is key to the joke. Combining them would likely be far more complex than either. Category theory is a branch of mathematics famous for its layers of abstractions, and is notoriously difficult to understand. The monad is one concept from category theory, with the famous definition of "A monad is simply a monoid in the category of endofunctors". It could be a reference to the Nomad faction in Twilight Imperium. The cone is another concept from category theory.
Cooperative	Cooperative board games center around players attempting to reach a common goal, winning or losing together. Many feature impediments to communication that make this more challenging; for instance, players may be restricted from saying certain words, or have secret cards they are unable to reveal before playing. The game in this panel appears to forbid all communication between players except for hand gestures. The punchline likens it to a very mundane activity, sorting a junk drawer, made artificially more difficult due to silence, and suggests the game is just as boring. It also raises suspicions that Megan has organised or hijacked this games night to trick her friends into doing chores she can't be bothered with, similarly to the way that Cueball once did for his taxes. The game described in the comic makes it seem like a (rather pointless) extension of Charades, and is also reminiscent of cooperative game The Mind.
Branded	Some board games are published and marketed as tie-ins to other forms of media, using settings, characters, or events from the source to appeal to its fans and get them to buy a game they might otherwise not have done. The theming often has little to nothing to do with the gameplay, as the many branded variants on Monopoly can attest. The game in this panel is themed after the sitcom Friends, with the unlikely addition of Son Goku from Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball's producers seem to be trying to expand into various board games (see the title text below).
Party	It can be hard to determine what makes a party game, other than it generally doesn't have the kinds of gameplay and strategy in other kinds of board games. Such games (like Pictionary or 30 Seconds) are often aimed at creating humorous or mildly embarrassing situations. However, party games marketed as "for adults" (such as the well known Cards Against Humanity) do tend to have one thing in common — swearing or references to sex. The content of the game described here (dealing cards and screaming whatever is on them) seems not to require a lot critical thinking, which may make it appealing in social situations where drink (or other substance) have been taken.
Social Deduction	Social deduction games, such as variations upon Mafia/Werewolf (like the derived computer game Among Us), revolve around the players attempting to deduce the roles or allegiances of other players, based on both special abilities provided by the game and the players' native abilities to tell which of their fellow players are being dishonest. Commonly, they involve an 'uninformed majority,' who do not know the allegiances of other players, attempting to discover the 'informed minority,' who know the members of their team. The minority is often framed as 'evil,' with the ability to 'kill' other players and remove them from the game; their victory condition often revolves around killing most or all of the 'good' players. In a game such as Cluedo/Clue, all the players are unaware of identity of the guilty party and the exact circumstances of the crime (even if they play that character themselves), but use what they do know (and can deduce from what others apparently know) to try to successfully narrow down the hidden facts of the game before anybody else. The game in this panel revolves around finding a 'secret murderer', as per these kinds of game, but evidently has required clarification that discovering a real murderer does not count, implying that one or more of the previous week's participants, possibly Black Hat, had actually killed someone in real life. Although Black Hat is not shown in this comic's board game night, it stands to reason that after admitting to murder he would not be invited back the following week. This situation might be a reference to the case of Tiernan Darnton who admitted, during a game of Truth or Dare, to killing his step-grandmother (though this was later revealed to be untrue[actual citation needed]).
Title text	"Candles of Vienna" is presumably the game described under "Hyperspecific Theme". An expansion pack is an additional set of playing equipment that can be combined with an existing game to add new gameplay possibilities. It appears that the rights holders for Goku have decided on a strategy of getting the character included in multiple board games. The character would arguably be even more out of place in Napoleonic Vienna than lounging on the sofas at Central Perk.

The setting, with the characters round a table playing games, is rather similar to that in the D&D comics.

Transcript

This is one of 44 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Types of Board Game

[Under this header text, the comic contains 8 panels. Each of them is labeled at the top with a short description of the board game being played and features (from left to right) Cueball, Ponytail, Megan, and White Hat sitting on chairs around a table trying to play it.]

Boring

Megan: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we get bored and go home.

Abstract

Cueball: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a...

Hyperspecific Theme

Ponytail: It's October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations...

Overcomplicated

White Hat: It's a cross between *Twilight Imperium* and *Cones of Dunshire,* but implemented entirely in category theory. Every cone is a monad, and...

Cooperative

Megan: We're working together to sort these decks of cards using only hand gestures. After that, we'll silently organize my junk drawer.

Branded

Cueball: You can play as Phoebe, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey, or, due to an ill-advised tie-in, Goku.

Party

Ponytail: Each of the cards in your hand has a bad word on it. On the count of three, yell the...

Social Deduction

Megan: Remember, per our *Find the Secret Murderer* house rules from last week, discovering that a player had committed a real-life murder does *not* count.

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Discussion

I created a starter explanation, but I have no idea how to create tables. 47.146.30.92 04:08, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

It is rare that xkcd makes me laugh out loud, but this comic's title text really got me! XD 2601:241:8002:3E0:C95E:1939:2ED0:CD78 04:22, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I wonder if blackhat is the one who committed the murder in the last game, and was expunged from the current round with the social deduction game RG (talk) 04:35, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Also, I "fixed" panel 6: https://www.pasteboard.co/hxBFDL497SLH.png RG (talk) 04:54, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Whoever it was didn't necessarily commit the murder in the game - all we know is that it was discovered during the game. 82.13.184.33 09:39, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

The reference to Monopoly seems ultra-specific given the plethora of games that have this structure, including Candyland, Snakes and Ladders, Sorry, and if one allows for multiple tokens, Parchisi and even Backgammon. Despite the amount of hate for Monopoly, it seems more likely that the editor has something against Monopoly than Randal. Mneme (talk) 05:14, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Also, Monopoly, played by the correct rules, is not that boring. It's just, that too many people skip the bidding rule. With 4 Players, after one turn around the table for all four game pieces (which required 10-12 dice rolls per player), statistically 75% of all properties should be snatched up. 195.65.24.115

Probably not worth debating how boring/bad Monopoly is or isn't. Suffice it to say that there are a large number of people who despise it, rightly or wrongly. Mneme (talk) 06:13, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

No, there are a large number of people who aware of the fact that Monopoly is supposed to be despised, and so espouse that view – like people who say they hate the word "moist" or believe that "We Built This City" is the worst song ever, because they've been told to say that. The number of people who have actually played Monopoly (using the actual rules) and who actually hate it is much, much smaller. People widely advertise hatred for a badly designed game based on a misinterpretation of Monopoly. That's not hating Monopoly – that's just not getting it and blaming someone else. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 11:15, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Monopoli? Is that the Italian version?--2A00:23CC:D248:8901:8046:B94B:F152:34FA 07:51, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

It's possible that 2A02:8071:5C20:40:84FB:9239:8AB8:1729 (who made both this edit and the Pachisi edit), coming from Germany, doesn't realize that in America, Parcheesi and Monopoly are the more accepted spellings (Pachesi is probably more appropriate for the historical game Parcheesi is based on, but this is about table games not historical games). Mneme (talk) 08:02, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I misread the tie-in as being Grogu, which would have made it even weirder. 82.13.184.33 08:52, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Me too. Maybe because I'm not a board gamer and have never heard of Goku before. Barmar (talk) 15:19, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I think a clearer example of a "boring" game is Ludo, where the goal is simply to move all the pawns around the board once. Redmess (talk) 09:57, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Ludo is Pachisi/Pachesi/Parcheesi, apparently (can't say I've ever heard of any of those names - always knew it as Ludo - but Ludo is a later name). There is a minimal amount of strategy involved in Ludo, in that you get to choose which pawn to move on any given go - unlike, say, Snakes & Ladders, which is entirely down to chance. 82.13.184.33 10:57, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Where does the 3.75 for Twilight Imperium come from? First and second editions have 3.46, 3rd edition has 4.26 and 4th is even at 4.35. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:03, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I miss the board game extention pack to Calvinball. 2A02:2455:1960:4000:1888:3B86:68A0:FA0F 11:47, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Remember: If you don't touch the 30-yard base wicket with the flag, you have to hop on one foot! --DollarStoreBa'al^converse 13:26, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Went with a base game rating for Twilight Imperium, maybe one of the expansions is higher, but base game seems like most appropriate to reference. --Trimutius (talk) 11:58, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

What did the comment mean about the truth or dare murder reveal being untrue?

I’m confused about this as well. I looked it up and it looks like he was convicted on some pretty compelling evidence. I’m not seeing anything about him being found not guilty on appeal. Salsmachev (talk) 14:01, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I assumed it meant that it turned out that the bit about admitting it in a game of Truth or Dare turned out to be embellishment, but I can't find any evidence of that either. 82.13.184.33 15:58, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I REALLY want "Candles of Vienna" to exist. Fephisto (talk) 14:31, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Maybe add some real hyperspecipic games? Like "castles of mad king Ludwig" or "Whitechapel". 2A02:BA0:10A8:4CB6:C1DE:6320:68C1:1C95 16:06, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure Hive is a good example for an abstract game; as it has a clear theme based on real things (bugs) even if some of the mechanics seem a little arbitrary. The other one given seems to fit; although the example in the comic feels to me like a parody of the Gipf games specifically. And trying to see how many others I could think of made me wish I had friends to play Otto Game Over with. -- Angel (talk) 17:14, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Are there actual rules for cones of dunshire available somewhere, or is it purely fantasy? New editor (talk) 18:35, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Being Category Theory, it's complete fantasy. Fephisto (talk) 19:25, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
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