RPGs And Eurostyle Games: When Opposites Attract

A large subset of board games is Eurostyle games. These games are almost exactly the opposite of RPGs in many ways. Keep in mind, board (including some card) games are a vastly larger segment of tabletop gaming than RPGs in monetary terms, and Eurostyle games are a large part of that segment. So even if you have no interest in non-RPGs, a comparison may help you understand what you do (and could do) with your own campaign or RPG design.

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Photo by Jaciel Melnik on Unsplash​

The original general description of Euros was "family games on steroids". But people often disagree at the most fundamental level, about what a Eurogame is - I've even heard my game Britannia described as a Euro (NO!) - so you'll certainly see exceptions to the following generalizations.

Player to Player Interaction
Most RPGs are highly interactive player to player games. During adventures, you cannot afford to ignore what the opposition (or your own comrades) are doing, you've got to react well or fail. Euros are usually low interaction games, where you can do your thing (frequently, solving what amounts to a puzzle) with little or no concern for what other players are doing. RPGs are directly competitive (in the sense of competing with the bad guys) while Euros are parallel competitions, sometimes called "multiplayer solitaire", where the object is to outdo the other players while rarely affecting them directly.

Avatar Basis - or Not
You have three types of avatar in games: the "do-er" (as in one doing actions) versus the King/general (the one giving the commands) versus the mysterious, omnipotent controller. RPGs popularized the single entity (usually humanoid, almost always alive) from which all the player's actions emanate, and which is at risk - if it dies, the player fails. This is the do-er avatar.

In Euros, typically the player is the mysterious, omnipotent controller, occasionally the one giving commands, rarely the do-er avatar.

Closed vs Open
RPGs usually have no goal that ends the game as a whole; if they do, it's often after a long series of adventures. Adventures may have a goal, or not. Euros rarely have an organic goal (one that derives from the situation), typically there's an arbitrary end (as "play 5 rounds"). They have clear objectives, often expressed in victory points

Euros rarely last as long as one session of an RPG (let alone many sessions in succession). When the game is done, there's no more, no continuing assets. Campaign RPGs continue from session to session with a continuing narrative.



Abstraction
Euros are often abstract games with a "theme" tacked on. RPGs usually model some situation, whether historical or fictional. The mechanisms that work for Eurogamers often don't work for an actual model of something.

Corporate Management vs Command
RPGs are usually "Command" style games, Dynamic games, where players look for direct, bold solutions to their in-game problems. Euros are often mid-level corporate management games, Incremental, about small improvements rather than big changes. (This is a future game styles topic.)

Dice
Dice tend to be avoided in Euros (though chance may be involved, often through cards). Most RPGs use lots of dice.

Co-operation
RPGs are usually co-operative endeavors against opposition controlled by a human GM. While there are co-operative Euros (Pandemic etc.), most are parallel competitions with the winner being the person who executes their task most efficiently. When RPGs are competitions, they may be parallel (whoever completes the adventure best among competing groups) or direct (one player group fighting another).

Simple Rules
Euros tend to have short rulesets; people often try to read the rules the first time while playing the game! RPGs mostly have long rulesets. The core book of a top-line RPG has more words than a hundred Eurogames!

Positivity
Euros generally use positive scoring mechanisms (you cannot lose points, e.g.). They're about building up, not tearing down or taking away. RPGs usually involve gain and loss, of hit points or character life, certainly the opposition lose their possessions and their lives, even as characters improve.

The Players
Many Euro fans don't get RPGs. Many RPGers don't play Euros. I think this is significantly generational, as avatar games (and co-op games) are the preference of Millennials, while Euros attract older players (though Baby Boomers are often wargamers).

If you want additional analysis of Eurogames, a dozen years ago I wrote a detailed description of the "Essence of Eurostyle Games." Things have changed, but most of it still applies.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

 

[dragoner]

Many Euro fans don't get RPGs. Many RPGers don't play Euros.

My board game group sometimes plays RPG's, and we play a decent amount of euros. That's me being somewhat facetious because I could say my RPG group mostly plays board games. The big difference I see is that board games are much easier to play, throw catan down at the tavern and play a game over pints. There is no prep, you just play; on the rpg front we have played D&D, CoC, Traveller, and Paranoia. The big difference there is that all the rpg's take a decent amount of prep before playing, not just world building, but knowing the rules. We get all games, and if people were consistently motivated to do the work for rpg's, someone volunteering to GM mainly, they would never lack for players. There are other dynamics going on, such as people often single me out to be GM, I like to be a player too, not always GM, and I'm not adverse to trying new games; nobody in the group is adverse, it's just the time investment in the prep for an adventure and learning new rules. I feel those two factors are going to always be a stumbling block for rpg's.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Need more crossover Euro-RPGs.

"You all meet at a tavern to trade wood for sheep..."

Dang, beat me to it.

 

[aramis erak]

I agree that boardgame play generates stories that can be enjoyed, related to others, etc.

But those stories don't factor into resolution as a constraint on, or context for, the application of the mechanics.

One can run some RPGs very much the same way. D&D 4E Encounters, for example.

Sorry for duplicating replies.

I can see why you put Cortex Plus into this camp. I don't think I agree about Burning Wheel, though. Mechanically (in PC build, and the basics of resolution) BW reminds me a lot of other high-sim skill list-based RPGs like RQ and RM. And even though Duels of Wits, as resolution, are clearly modelled in general terms on the prior Fight! system, it's highly adapted to correspond to the particular fiction.

The mechanics are intrusive into the fiction, and are non-simulation, outside fight.

DoW doesn't work like a real convincing argument system; it's very much a game in its own right, and it can be run just fine as pure mechanics which then have emergent story due to labels. It constrains the fiction, not the other way round.

Range and Cover, for its part, is the same. It is a narrative wargame, mechanics constraining fiction, not simulating reality.

Mouse Guard and Torchbearer use a single universal "conflict" system; the adaptation is which 2-4 skills are slotted in.

In all of them, skill in the engine is as important as skill on the sheet, but player skill at convincing arguments or tactics is utterly irrelevant to the outcomes.

 

[aramis erak]

To me a eurogame is primarily differentiated by the extreme limitation -or complete elimination - of luck, shfting the emphasis on strategy.

I'd be curious to see an rpg fully embrace this. I'm not sure what it would look like though. Perhaps it would be pools of poinrs a la gumshoe and the player can choose when to succeed at an action and when to fail. Perhaps choosing to fail would increase their pool for success later, so they have to choose a tradeoff between success or immediate consequences and later gain.


Hmm, I'm going to have to think about that...

The most well known two eurogames, the ones axiomatic to the genre, are generally considered to be Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne. both have extreme amounts of random.

Power Grid, Ticket to Ride, Airlines Europe, Puerto Rico, San Juan, Citadels - all are highly random.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The most well known two eurogames, the ones axiomatic to the genre, are generally considered to be Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne. both have extreme amounts of random.

Power Grid, Ticket to Ride, Airlines Europe, Puerto Rico, San Juan, Citadels - all are highly random.

I'd say they have a normal amount of random.

 

[billd91]

Too much of this article seems to be differences in search of something actually important.

A large subset of board games is Eurostyle games. These games are almost exactly the opposite of RPGs in many ways.

The original general description of Euros was "family games on steroids". But people often disagree at the most fundamental level, about what a Eurogame is - I've even heard my game Britannia described as a Euro (NO!) - so you'll certainly see exceptions to the following generalizations.

Britannia may not be a Eurogame, but I can see how people label it one. Players don't get eliminated because new historical periods bring more cultures on board, replenishing their hold on parts of the board. Winning is by a scoring mechanism and a player's strategies will change from historical period to historical period as the cultures they score with have different goals. There are balancing mechanisms in the size of the cultures that vary with different periods so each player has the potential to have some big scores. The main difference is the fact that the player tokens are in direct competition with each other. So, I can definitely see the mistake. It definitely matches some frequent descriptors.

Player to Player Interaction
Most RPGs are highly interactive player to player games. During adventures, you cannot afford to ignore what the opposition (or your own comrades) are doing, you've got to react well or fail. Euros are usually low interaction games, where you can do your thing (frequently, solving what amounts to a puzzle) with little or no concern for what other players are doing. RPGs are directly competitive (in the sense of competing with the bad guys) while Euros are parallel competitions, sometimes called "multiplayer solitaire", where the object is to outdo the other players while rarely affecting them directly.

Kind of an over-broad characterization - maybe even a mischaracterization. The number of times you can actively screw your opponents in parallel play/multiplayer solitaire is actually pretty high in many of the iconic Eurogames. In fact, doing so will probably be key to winning the game. You're just not directly taking resources away from each other as often as in a war game.

Closed vs Open
RPGs usually have no goal that ends the game as a whole; if they do, it's often after a long series of adventures. Adventures may have a goal, or not. Euros rarely have an organic goal (one that derives from the situation), typically there's an arbitrary end (as "play 5 rounds"). They have clear objectives, often expressed in victory points

Euros rarely last as long as one session of an RPG (let alone many sessions in succession). When the game is done, there's no more, no continuing assets. Campaign RPGs continue from session to session with a continuing narrative.

Unless you're playing a big campaign wargame like Red Barricades for ASL, isn't this really true of all board games vs RPGs? They have an objective - they have a limited time frame. This isn't a uniquely Eurogame thing at all.

Abstraction
Euros are often abstract games with a "theme" tacked on. RPGs usually model some situation, whether historical or fictional. The mechanisms that work for Eurogamers often don't work for an actual model of something.

Again, I think we're looking at board game vs RPG thing here in general, not so much Eurogame - unless real war conflict involved someone comparing unit power factors, reducing it to a ratio and rolling a couple of dice on a table to determine who destroys each other's units or forces them to rout as you do in MANY non-Euro war games. I certainly don't drive my car around my Life in an inexorable path to the poor house or tycoon manor either.

I also think generic games, whether GURPS, Hero, or Fate tend to undermine this as well since they're abstracted with themes tacked on as well.

The Players
Many Euro fans don't get RPGs. Many RPGers don't play Euros. I think this is significantly generational, as avatar games (and co-op games) are the preference of Millennials, while Euros attract older players (though Baby Boomers are often wargamers).

This is probably the worst generalization of the lot. There's plenty of crossover. I doubt it's even significantly different than the crossover between RPGers and pre-Eurogamers of earlier generations. If I expected to see a trend related to the differences in Eurogames vs other board games, I'd expect more crossover because I'd expect the players who don't like the more direct competition of traditional wargames would prefer both cooperative RPGs and less directly competitive Eurogames.

 

[CubicsRube]

The most well known two eurogames, the ones axiomatic to the genre, are generally considered to be Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne. both have extreme amounts of random.

Power Grid, Ticket to Ride, Airlines Europe, Puerto Rico, San Juan, Citadels - all are highly random.

Well known, but not considered strongly eurogame. In fact, while i like settlers of catan, hardcore euro fans criticise the game precisely for its randomness. Agricola is generally a good example of a eurogame as are many worker placement games.

 

[aramis erak]

Well known, but not considered strongly eurogame. In fact, while i like settlers of catan, hardcore euro fans criticise the game precisely for its randomness. Agricola is generally a good example of a eurogame as are many worker placement games.

Even agricola has some random, in the initial hand of cards.

 

[lewpuls]

I see lots of wargamers who play RPGs, but few Eurogamers who do. Likely part of any difference in observation is that I don't regard every non-wargame as a Euro (Catan is *not* a Euro, as many have observed), whereas others do. If you treat every non-wargame as a "Euro", you'll inevitably see many parallels with RPGs, or with any other kind of game. Similarly, if you look for exceptions in a category as broad as RPGs (which includes many so-called games that are much more storytelling aids than actual games), you'll find them.


Any generalization about "games" cannot take the outliers into account. That's the nature of generalizations. Put another way, if you broaden definitions sufficiently, then you can make a case for any category being much like any other category.


I don't care about inevitably-bogus nonsense that a very widely played game such as D&D is "archaic". What's typical is what's actually played a lot. Generalizations have to be based on what's typical, not on any possibly-mythical "leading edge". Your average gamer doesn't even know a leading edge (if any) exists. Innovation is highly overrated.


Aramis erak, thank you for the discussion of "major" and of models vs abstracts (which you'll notice is significantly longer than my original post could be).


CubicsRube: "To me a eurogame is primarily differentiated by the extreme limitation -or complete elimination - of luck, shfting the emphasis on strategy. " Surely not? Diplomacy is a Euro? No cards, no dice, no luck. Chess and Checkers are Euros? Stratego? There are lots of recently-released games with an emphasis on strategy and no luck to speak of (though Stratego does have limited information in a way that Chess does not). Shameless plug, my space wargame Crashing Suns on Worthington Publishing's pre-order system is another. The point here is, "Euro" has such different meaning to different people. Those who called Britannia a Euro may have been thinking about "no player elimination" and "point scoring," e.g., but that doesn't make it anything like a Euro.


billd91, it seems we disagree about everything:
In a highly interactive game you have to watch, and probably react to, every move of every opponent. Occasionally screwing someone does not make a game highly interactive, though it does take the game out of the "purely non-interactive" category. This is not merely "direct" vs "indirect".


I wasn't looking for *uniquely* Euro differences with RPGs, of course. That would make the whole exercise a nightmare.


Britannia as a Euro is nonsense, even though there are some commonly-Euro characteristics to it.






Of course, Your Mileage May Vary.