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I think so much about how Catan showed up, got really popular, and then more or less right after that two of its huge characteristics (open trading + dice rolls as the primary decider of things) have almost completely disappeared from modern game design.

There's still dice rolls in some games of course, but open trading in particular feels like something that people really don't want in games anymore. And I totally get why

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volemo 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And I totally get why

Why?

Catan is one of my favourite boardgames.

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rtpg 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Catan, like Monopoly (or I guess Cricket and Baseball) has am awkward interminable nature to it, especially at high player counts

Long trading discussions are one component of this. The pure randomness of dice meaning that the internal economy can be all messed up for a while also plays into this

There are games with more consistent runtimes that also don’t get bogged down by people with a high chatter:play ratio.

I like hanging out with people to play games but Catan is in that category of game where just one overly annoying person can just make a session totally suck.

I’d rather play something like Carcassonne or some other modern games that involve competition and territorial management like El Grande where I at least have an idea of how long it’ll take.

	▲	horsawlarway 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I also just don't think Catan is actually all that "fun" once you've played a couple of times. It's a decent intro board game because the mechanics aren't terribly complex, you don't have to manage too many pieces, and there's so much randomness that any given player can win if they're even vaguely trying. But that last bit is also its achilles heel - there's so much randomness that the strategy is basically ankle deep. It just becomes a session of "do I have friendly people at the table" or "can I cajole/harass people into bad trades". Neither of those are all that fun (at least to me). There are much better social games, and there are much better strategy games.

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kangda123 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What are some other good games with open trading?

	▲	sershe 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Western empires et al. The trading also allows limited bluffing (you'll get what you want but also probably smth negative). But it takes all day in no small part due to open trading.