My Top 10 Favorite Cooperative Games That Prevent Quarterbacking

This week’s video includes mentions of Mental Blocks, Dead of Winter, Magic Maze, The Crew, Gloomhaven, Marvel Champions, and Space Team, as well as the top 10. I should have also mentioned Graphic Novel Adventures.

1. Just One
2. Shipwreck Arcana
3. The Mind
4. Mysterium
5. Mechs vs Minions
6. Flip Ships
7. Shadows Over Camelot
8. Hanabi
9. Spirit Island
10. Forgotten Waters

I should have also mentioned The Game, Codenames: Duet, The Grizzled, The Reckoners, and Atlantis Rising.

[davidfathers]

Thanks for this video, Jamey! I have strong feelings on this. For me, it's a player problem, but not in the way that most would assume. There's a social contract we unconsciously agree to when sitting down to play a game.

Often, people join games with very different aspirations. Some sit down to win, and others sit down to have agency, or tell a story, or to have fun with friends (and these things are sometimes mutually exclusive). In a perfect world, the social contract would be clear. Are we here to win, or are we here to have agency in our own experience?
The fact that this contract is not explicitly agreed upon before the game means it's a player problem, but it's not always the quarterbacker's problem! If one of the people in a 4-player game cares more about player agency than winning, and all 3 others care more about winning, then it can't really be blamed on the quarterbackers. I personally value story-telling and player agency above winning in games. But that's not the case for everyone.

[eloureirotubeyou]

15:38 1. Just One
13:10 2. Shipwreck Arcana
12:05 3. The Mind
10:25 4. Mysterium
8:55 5. Mechs vs Minions
8:00 6. Flip Ships
6:35 7. Shadows Over Camelot
4:50 8. Hanabi
3:25 9. Spirit Island
1:10 10. Forgotten Waters

[fngkestrel]

It's totally a mix of both. An interesting moment I had was playing Pandemic early on with some friends who had never played it. I wanted them to go through the mental puzzle of what to do but because the group was fairly laid back, they asked me to quarterback them! It was really revealing to see how player personalities can affect the intended interaction. A game like Pandemic shines when all the players have the same temperament and engagement, but falls apart quickly if those are mismatched.

[gunzilla]

Totally agree on The Shipwreck Arcana. Dang, that game's so good and underrated. Nice list, Jaime! I think mine would have included Codenames Duet, The Crew, The Game, The Grizzled, and Spaceteam probably. Two of which are on your honorable mentions, so I'll count them.

[LunaandArtemis]

Kept an eye on the cat sleeping in the chair! They get up at around minute 15 if you are looking for cute cat action!

[liamhain]

I think Quarterbacking is often a combination of dominant player and design problems. In my gaming group, we have a really smart, strategic thinker. With Pandemic and Ghost Stories specifically, he was very able and willing to do all decision-making for other players and the games did not prevent him from doing this. It's partly the reason why I mostly own competitive board games - when you play, you make the decisions and you feel involved.

[rickadam]

Great video Mr. Stegmaier! You mentioned a handful of games that would make my list, so I'll just mention a few you didn't mention.

Too Many Bones - Mostly because a lot of it is dependent on dice rolls. One of the most interesting parts of the game is the fact that each character has 16 dice that are unique to them, no characters have the same die. So as you unlock skill points to either increase your stats (atk, def, dex or cha) or unlock new dice, you are becoming more and more unique than the other players at the table. You can discuss certain strategies but really the battles feel like a big brawl where you just pick your dice and go for it!

Nemesis - Similar to Shadows and Dead of Winter in that one or more of the players at the table could be a traitor (I enjoy in this one that you actually get two objective cards at the beginning, one is always a good mission, the other could be either a good or traitor mission, so multiple people could be in on the backstabbing!) but the game is intense enough thanks to the aliens that you need to work together to survive. Even if everyone at the table is good, your missions could all be different, and people could be bluffing so there's not really a way to tell them what to do.

Incoming Transmission - I played this at a convention and backed it on kickstarter but it's been having some issues getting sent out. If it ever does get released it is one to check out for sure. A group of players control a pawn (the human) on a grid (the space ship) and you have to repair the engines before the time runs out. One person knows which parts need to be gathered, which ones are broken and need to be repaired, and where they need to go. That player is going to hand a number of tiles each round to the group of players who control the pawn (the number of tiles depends on the round) but there's always a couple extra tiles that have to be added in at random (also dependant on the round) so they'll go through a number of tiles, and need to choose which tiles they think actually didn't belong, and what order they should do them in "I think he wants us to go up, right, grab, repair, then come back down like he's trying to get us to repair this part and bring it back somewhere." It causes for interesting discussions and was fun to play both as the group trying to make the right moves with the pawn, and as the transmitter who had all the information.

As far as thoughts on if it's a player or developer problem that's an interesting question, I think it could be either. I know some gamers who start quarterbacking even if the game isn't cooperative. Like you're playing Terraforming Mars and on your turn you're thinking for a moment, and that one guy at the table goes "Well if you have something that increases oxygen you're gonna wanna do that and try to play something off of here if you can because it'll get you this" But since there are ways to design a game where you literally can not quarterback (Hanabi being a perfect example) it could also be that the game lends itself to it.

[codyleonard]

I think part of the alpha player challenge is if a game is difficult, there is a lot of pressure to win. So while players may have agency, it's stressful to know your decision could torpedo the game for others. So people are motivated both to alpha and to follow.

[ThomasLiljeruhm]

I feel like co-op in board games is a bit different from reality, which might be what sometimes causes some problems. Imagine if you work on a project at a company, then there's always gonna be a formal (or informal) leader present. Or if your plane crashes in the mountains and a group of people survives, there's gonna be (a will be highly needed) a strong leader to help with their continuous survival. But in board games, we're instead expected to save the world and all our friends/players without a clear leader. It's very difficult.

[Houp]

I would add to the list Kitchen Rush, Letter Jam, Codenames:Duet, The Game

[Yanix]

I just recently played a game called Yum Yum island with my young nieces and I think they took care of this aspect quite well. It's a dexterity cooperative game where you must drop food pellets inside some animals mouth while blindfolded. Depending on the result of a dice, you can sometimes help the active players by giving them some directions. But at other times, the dice will prevent anyone from helping the active player. I think it makes a nice compromise.

[BobHarrison]

Great list. One of my favorite games is Scotland Yard, but I cannot play it with one specific friend. His intelligence is off the charts and he wants to outwit Mr X so bad, that he ends up quarterbacking everyone's moves.

[WhiteHawke]

It's a design problem first for me, and a player problem second. Because competitive gamers have the goal to win the game, they will take actions (such as giving advice they believe is helpful) that cause quarterbacking. Because competitive gamers are going to be wrong sometimes, even when they're trying as hard as they can to win, it's also a player problem because they're inadvertently sabotaging their own goals.

[proverandom]

Great video! I love coop games and hate quarterbacking. Mechs vs minions is #1 on my wishlist for a long time now but is really hard to get. Same with shipwreck arcana (want to play that one since your favourite mechanism video on it).
My favourite in this genre are Space Alert and Grizzled. Check them out.

[ClockworkWyrm]

Been looking at Shipwreck Arcana for some time. I may have to pull the trigger on that one.

[Epistemophilos]

How nice of the cat to quickly pick up the phone so as to not let it ruin the video at 14:58.

[janniskoberstein]

I actually just played Spirit Island and the shipwreck arcana two days ago. You also reminded me of how much I miss playing Just One! Currently it's kind of hard to get to the table…

I also have a quite personal question, which is kind of related to your video and especially Just One. Your opinion would mean a lot to me! 😊
Sorry in advance for the longer text and especially for the following preface leading to my question:
So, for a little context, the three things I'm enjoying the most in board games are
1. Challenging strategy games with meaningful decisions (I think there are a lot of these on the market)
2. Co-op games; I love how they combine strategy and communication and in general I like playing together with instead of against players a bit more
3. I absolutely adore association games (or maybe you call them word games). I just feel like the word games we currently have (Code names, just one, taboo, Decrypto, Dixit and so on) are more on the lighter side and lean more towards party or filler games. So, I've been wondering for some years if there is a chance for more challenging heavier word game, Something you would still want to get to the table if you are feeling like playing a “serious game” (no degradation to smaller games intended! 😉).
Something like Spirit Island did for cooperative strategy games. Before spirit island these games used to be more catered towards casual players.
I guess the one game that feels like a step in the direction I wanted to go was “Decrypto”, but it is still not there. So long story short I gave it a lot of thought, as well as 2 years of work and designed a more challenging and somewhat deeper, but still “elengent” word game. I've shown it to quite some people and also presented it at the annual board game meeting my city
organizes and the people who liked it really seemed to like it.
So my question to you as someone, who I think knows the current state of the board game market pretty much as well as no one else at the moment is: Do you think that there is a significant enough number of people, who want a heavier word game? The fact that there are just no such games makes me wonder if there's just no demand for such a game. or maybe I've just missed them so far.
The way I designed it the difficulty level is very well adjustable from as easy as code names up to quite challenging, But for some it still seems to present some hurdle of entry, while I designed it for people who are like done with code names and want more.
The game also teaches a deeper understanding of word association and Is a playful way to practice “deeper thinking”.
While I kind of had a cooperative game in the back of mind I began with a competitive version. It was kind of the main critique point my friend said because they somehow need the feeling of play against someone, while I always felt that games like taboo being competitive feels kind of artificial while really being a cooperative game in it's hard. Then Just One got released, which finally gave me the courage to make my game fully cooperative.
While I loved word games from the moment I played taboo for the first time, the market seemed to have needed code names to really realize how much people will enjoy them and now there are word games everywhere and every bored game company seems to want a piece of the pie, but there is still no deeper word game I feel like. Still I hope that the current flood of beginner level word games might just build a target group of people that someday will ask for a more challenging word game.
You are one of my board game designer idols so your opinion would mean a lot to me! 😊

[BillyIndiana]

The people that I play with typically don't quarterback due to their more reserved personalities (hopefully I don't either😄). I have played before with people who do, and for Pandemic as an example, it diminishes the experience for me. I hadn't thought about how game design could reduce this & found this topic & this list fascinating! I love Forgotten Waters & Just One & now I'm wondering if part of the appeal is because of this design facet. Thank you for sharing about this topic!

[williamgarcia-medina]

I heard Forgotten Waters has solo and 2 player variants which work well.

[haze]

I think Forgotten Waters does a clever thing to prevent quarterbacking that you might have overlooked.
Pirates choose actions in order based on their ranking, and the game will sometimes say certain actions are mandatory. Usually it's the pirates going last who are forced to do those important actions, even if they'd rather have a free choice and pick something that sounds more exciting. However, pirates can do things to gain popularity and climb the ranks, so they're not stuck doing the same actions over and over the whole game.
In other words, the game itself is quarterbacking the players! And then it turns that into a mini-game of its own, where the players can rearrange who gets full agency, and who has to "listen to orders". Turning quarterbacking into a fair system within the game actually makes it fun to players, instead of making them feel like their voice isn't being heard.