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EP 46 - Managing Minutes Like Meeples
9 Plays1 year ago
Over the summer, I had a conversation with a close friend & fellow creative mind. He also happens to be a board gamer & designer, who was providing a kind ear for your host. I was feeling overwhelmed with the amount of stuff on my plate. My time was being stretched too thin, often by forces out of my control.
This friend made a comment about my life resembling a worker placement game, which resonated and stuck with me long after our conversation. This model of thought was interesting and helpful enough that I want to share it with the audience today.
For more info and to download a free PDF of today's episode notes, visit: www.chriskreuter.com/CDWI
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Transcript
Bridging the Gap Using Wisdom and Actionable Steps
00:00:15
Speaker
Crystal Deal with it focuses on bridging the gap between where you're at now and where you'd like to be. We'll explore wisdom and techniques from a wide variety of domains and industries and apply them to your unique challenges. I love developing frameworks, processes, and storytelling metaphors that enable personal and business growth. Through actionable next steps, we'll build momentum and confidence. My goal is to help you clear roadblocks, do more with what you have, and realize the potential of yourself and your team. So throw your challenges my way in Crystal Deal.
Content Ownership and AI Clarification
00:00:50
Speaker
First, an AI statement that all elements of this episode are products of the author, Chris Croyder, and made without the use of any AI tools.
Life as a Worker Placement Game
00:00:59
Speaker
Episode 46, managing minutes like meeples. So over the summer, I had a conversation with a close friend and fellow creative mind. He also happens to be a board gamer and designer who is providing a kind ear for your host.
00:01:13
Speaker
So I was feeling very overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that was on my plate, that my time was being stretched too thin and often by forces out of my control. So this friend made a comment about my life resembling a worker placement game, which resonated and stuck with me long after our conversation. And I thought that this model of thought was really interesting and helpful enough to share it with the audience today.
00:01:36
Speaker
So for the nine gamers out there, a worker placement game is typically defined as a game where each player has a limited set of workers. Players place them in different ways to take actions, collect resources, impact other players and or score points.
00:01:51
Speaker
One of the quintessential worker placement games is Carcassonne, a classic from 2000.
Recommended Games and Supporting Local Stores
00:01:56
Speaker
Carcassonne is included in most lists of the best gateway games for introducing people into the world of modern strategy board games. It's also one of my all-time personal favorites. If you want to check it out, there are some wonderful digital adaptations, and even better, you can pick up a physical game at any FLGS, friendly local game store, or a big box retailer like Target if that's all it's around. But shop small and local if you can.
Rules of Carcassonne and Life Decisions
00:02:21
Speaker
As one half of the ownership team of the former board game publisher Masquerade Games, I feel it's my duty to provide a brief digression for board game nerds of the other worker placement games that I recommend in order of increasing complexity. Alien Frontiers, Stone Age, Lords of Waterdeep, Kalis, Sulkin, Copycat, and Agricola.
00:02:42
Speaker
Anyway, back to Carcassonne. So in my basement I proudly showcase a runner-up trophy from the 2012 board gaming world championships. Now I lost out on the championship title because of the third made-up timebreaker. Not that I'm bitter or anything, but I just mention this because it's both nerdy as hell and to establish that I'm really good at the game.
00:03:02
Speaker
Which brings me back to my friend's point, as he knew me to be good at worker placement games, particularly Carcassonne, he felt the game was a helpful analogy for better allocating my limited resources and focus, or to put it in the simplest terms, meeple's equal minutes. In Carcassonne, each player starts with 8 wooden meeple tokens, which is gamer talk for me people,
00:03:23
Speaker
And they build out a representation of the medieval city of Carcassonne, France, which starts from a single starter tile. Players take turns drawing a random tile, adding it to the growing city, and then have the option to place one of their meeples only on the tile just played. And this tile is randomly drawn from the supply, but from a known set.
00:03:44
Speaker
Side note here that one of the keys to excelling at the game is memorizing the set of 72 tiles, at least in the base game, which allow you to recognize what tiles are likely left to be pulled and which scoring options are more likely to succeed. And I know this rules explanation may seem a bit dry, but I promise I'm about to tie it all back into this time management idea, but you need to have context of the game in order for that to make any sense.
00:04:08
Speaker
Meeples can be placed in only four possible ways. Again, ignoring all the expansions, but these options may be limited depending on what's printed on that particular tile. And a meeple has to remain on the tile until the feature that they're working on is completed and scored. At that point, they would return to your stock and can be used again. So again, meeple management equals time management. So I'm going to oversimplify here, but your fixed set of meeples can do one of four things.
00:04:35
Speaker
Nights, they work on completing castles, which tend to be larger and more complicated, and very strategic. They often require a commitment of multiple meeples to be successful. You can make them a thief who works on completing roads, which are smaller and easier to complete. They score half as much as castles, but usually don't require large commitments of meeples. There's also less variability and risk with road segments, making them more reliable for quicker in-game scoring.
00:05:03
Speaker
You can make your meeple a monk. These are placed on cloisters or monasteries, whatever your preference, but they have to be completely surrounded by other tiles in order to score. It's impossible for others to steal or share the monk's points, but a monk's placement and success often relies on what the other players are involved with around their cloister.
00:05:23
Speaker
Lastly, you can make a farmer. This is a permanent commitment. They stay on the board for the rest of the game, no matter what, and score only at the end. And their value is determined by the number of completed castles that touch their fields, regardless of who completed them.
Life's Challenges and Managing Commitments
00:05:38
Speaker
These are long-term, highly strategic plays, and depending on the level of cooperation among the players, which I'll touch more on later, they do have the potential to leap you far ahead on points at the end of the game.
00:05:50
Speaker
So many of you are likely seeing some of the areas where we can draw parallels to life. So I've decided to tackle these parallels in a series of questions a player can ask during a game of Carcassonne paired with a parallel question we may ask in life.
00:06:04
Speaker
How many players are involved in my game? The parallel, how many projects and commitments are impacting my life? So in a two player game, you get 36 turns. In a three player game, that number drops to 24 turns. With four players, there's 18. And with five players, you only get 14 or 15 turns depending on the starting player.
00:06:23
Speaker
The fewer turns you have in the game, the lower your meeple ratio. Each meeple will have less opportunity to impact the game. The severity of each commitment of these resources then changes. You don't need to ensure meeples come back regularly when more players are involved because you're only going to get to play them two or three times max. But the less impact you as a player have on the game, that creates more need for cooperation and there's more opportunities to cooperate.
00:06:49
Speaker
The next question you could ask is, how much risk am I comfortable with? There is a risk of incomplete castles reducing the impacts of knights and farmers until lesser extent a monk or two. If you're in a later stage of the game, you have to assess your score, the meatballs you have remaining. Where does your focus need to be? Because again, these tiles can be placed in multiple different ways depending on what's printed on them.
00:07:12
Speaker
So, should you focus more on quick, short-term opportunities with less risk, or large battles for dominance over larger, riskier, and higher scoring features?
00:07:21
Speaker
Another question, with whom should I cooperate or compete with? You may have multiple partnerships going on at the same time. Which partnerships are with players doing better or worse than you? If you always share with players who are scoring higher than you, there's little chance you'll catch up to them. But if you avoid partnering with higher scoring players at particular times, you're likely not going to win. So the parallel here is, what kinds of people do you need to partner with for success on your various projects?
00:07:50
Speaker
There's also risks of overcommitting resources. Are other players encroaching on your feature to share or even steal your points? How likely is it that a player can place a tile in a position that will prevent a castle from being completed, thereby cutting its score in half?
00:08:05
Speaker
What's the level of acceptable risk to other players trying to enter into a partnership or confrontation with you? If their ability to take risks exceeds yours, especially if they're in the lead, you need to consider abandoning that feature. The parallel here is a common term from poker when someone has to avoid the trap of feeling pot committed.
Strategic Decisions and Real-Life Interactions
00:08:24
Speaker
Just because you made a poor choice with a past meeple that's not gonna score barely any points, it doesn't mean you have to keep paying into that mistake to try and justify it.
00:08:34
Speaker
So another question you can ask yourself during a game of Carcassonne is what tiles are left in the supply? Or parallel, what kinds of opportunities are likely going to occur in the future that could improve my current projects or open up new opportunities for success?
00:08:49
Speaker
Can you discern a pattern to what's come before? The more you play the game of Carcassonne, the more likely you'll be able to predict when a certain feature is unlikely to be successful or is more likely to be lost to another player. So experience can help you avoid these pitfalls and give you more insight into avoiding bad expenditures of time later, i.e. learning from your mistakes.
00:09:11
Speaker
It's impossible to predict exactly what's going to come, but you'll likely be able to discern a rough pattern to the possibilities, giving yourself a few scenarios when your resources and the stakes of your game or project are at their highest.
00:09:25
Speaker
Another question, should I commit this last meeple? Or it's parallel, what energy do I need to leave in the tank? If you play your meeples too quickly earlier in the game, you're going to have very few available, if at all, that take advantage of future opportunities. As in the last question, the ability to adapt to future plays is critical, especially if you've got some capacity to understand how things might evolve.
00:09:48
Speaker
The fewer players in a game, the more pronounced this becomes, as you have more control over the final outcome. The meeples you expend have the potential to score you greater individual rewards over the other players, because they tend to be played more times during the course of the game. But when does the situation dictate the risk of playing your last meeple?
00:10:08
Speaker
Can you strand other players' meeples in uncompletable features, therefore preventing them from scoring until the end of the game, i.e. not returning to their supply? The caveat is you don't want to end the game with meeples unused in your supply, as they have no value if they're not on the board in play. Even placed on a single road, that one point's worth more than if you didn't utilize them at all. So you gotta put yourself out there. So why does the game of Carcassonne feel so much different with two players rather than five?
00:10:38
Speaker
The parallel here is just some light commentary on how the more parties that are involved in a game, the more cooperation that's needed for success. There's a clear parallel to politics here. A bipartisan two-player game has no natural cooperation to it. I need to focus on scoring points that you're not going to score. Sharing points does nothing to advance one player over another.
00:11:00
Speaker
But with more players, there's more that's out of your control. The more things are going to change before you can have a direct impact on the game. Or take your turn.
Communication and Navigating Complex Situations
00:11:09
Speaker
The less impact you feel that each of your meeples or effort has on the overall result.
00:11:15
Speaker
And here's the thing few people realize playing Carcassonne, and I suppose life. There's no rule that says you can't talk. You can negotiate, make recommendations, point out flaws and placements, highlight unexpected or overlooked placement opportunities. Yes, even if it helps you. You can forge alliances, or break them and do something underhanded. You can point out to newer or inexperienced players how they're being manipulated for others' gains.
00:11:41
Speaker
or you can manipulate them for your own game. And all these examples open up as soon as the third player joins in the game, and they get increasingly complex and vital with four or five players. So, Carcassonne can be a great model not just for our own time management. It's been used in classes teaching urban planning, cooperation to kids and adults, in language learning, and it's just a downright blast to play. So here's hoping that Klaus Jurgen Vrede's masterpiece graces your table or device soon.
00:12:11
Speaker
I'll close with a fun quote about the city of Carcassonne from A Dreamer's Tales, written in 1910 by Edward Plunkett. I really had to do a deep dive for this quote, but I thought it was fun. This city is the fairest of the wonders of mourning. The sun shouts when he beholdeth it. For Carcassonne evening weepeth when evening passeth away. And with that, have a great day.
00:12:33
Speaker
If you feel that Chris dealt with it, I'd appreciate your support of the show by sharing it with someone who might benefit. Ratings on your favorite podcast player are also helpful in growing the audience.
Engagement and Resources
00:12:42
Speaker
Visit chriscroiter.com for free downloadable PDFs, notes, and resources from today's episode. Sign up for the CDWY mailing list, or to send in your problems or requests for future shows. That's C-H-R-I-S-K-R-E-U-T-E-R.com. Or use the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and Chris will deal with it.
00:13:08
Speaker
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