Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3244 xkcd comics, and only 66 (2%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| Types of Board Game |
 Title text: I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion. |
Explanation
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 (especially the later 3rd and 4th editions). 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". 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 โ 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 of critical thinking, which may make it appealing in social situations where drinks (or other substances) may 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.
- 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
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.
View comic discussionNew here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to create an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for xkcd comics, characters, What If? articles, and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.
- Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.
- You can browse the comics from the list of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
- The incomplete explanations are listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
Rules
Don't be a jerk!
There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to xkcd and, of course, only submit material that can legally be posted and freely edited. Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
