Why I don't like Settlers of Catan: A Rant

In all honesty, Settlers of Catan was pretty much the first geeky board game that I've ever played. By first geeky board game I mean that I don't count the games like Scrabble, Chess or Checkers, games with no theme and no abstract gameplay. Settlers of Catan were the first game where I played something like a settler colonizing an island, gathering resources and building cities. This make-believe style of playing was so refreshing, so intriguing to a 12 year old boy that I quickly fell in love with exchanging sheep for bricks and hoping to have the longest trade route.

As time went by, I played more and more board games and even watched as couple of my friends designed and published their own board game to a modest success. I started to understand the mechanism inside the games and I saw the two extremes of pure control (as in Chess) and pure luck (as in Monopoly).Settlers of Catan eventually gave way to other games and when I played Settlers again after about 2 years, I tried in vain to enjoy the game like I had used to. The rolling of dice, that seemed to hate the numbers I needed, made me groan as bad luck was indeed the prime factor that influenced the enjoyment from the whole game. I asked myself what changed, what happened to me that made this game so uninteresting?

Now, it was not the last time I played the game, so I'm not ranting about a bad session years ago when I had bad luck with dice. I gave Settlers couple more chances but I found myself counting my opponents’ points to see when the game would end. And today I'm sure I'm gonna give them a pass when someone suggests to play them. 

Oh I wish I was playing something else,

photo from BGG by msaari

Right off the bat, I can say that it is the dice that make me dislike it. I grew tired of luck deciding which player would profit and which would not. Probability my butt but I sat through a session that saw more 12s than 9s and that's just something you cannot affect. I could plan the best layout covering all resource yields and still not build a single hamlet because I derped my rolls and gained my opponent a massive influx of sheep.

Settlers of Catan advertise strategy and interactive resource trade but all that is actually hindered by the two dice that randomly choose who gets to playand who does not. The game doesn't even let you plan effectively in advance. Dice, J’accuse! Letting chance to decide who has an advantage in a competitive game is stupid. After all, that's like flipping a coin to see if you get to move your pawns in chess.

It's not like I hate the dice in general. I play plenty of games that use them to be able to give several examples of, in my opinion, better uses of the dice. Look at A Touch of Evil, a game with both competitive and cooperative modes. There the dice are used for movement and for skill checks. The better you are in a skill, the more dice you roll and your chance of success is higher. If you are unlucky in one area, you can improve your chances by finding or buying items that improve them. Also the dice rolling is so frequent that you get soothing successes from time to time too. The same thing applies for Arkham Horror where the game is biased against you so an unsuccessful roll is the normal outcome of a conflict. Generally, it is safe to say that cooperative games are much dice-friendlier than competitive games as the bad luck strikes the whole team, uniting everyone against the common enemy. 

You know you're gonna roll 6,

photo from BGG by kilroy_locke

I have this one game, it’s called The Tower but I guess it’s known in English-speaking countries as Jinga or something like that. My version has a die and the blocks have certain symbols on them. You roll the die to see what block to pull out. The die here adds to the complexity of the game, it ups the difficulty a tiny bit since you may be forced to choose between blocks in hazardous places but it does not prevent you from playing…

“But chance is implemented in the system of the game, if you don’t like it, don’t play it,” I can almost hear people say. And they’re right. I’ll never enjoy Dominion as much as The Race for The Galaxy and I’ll always pick Transamerica before A Ticket to Ride and that’s just because some mechanics suit me better than others.I don’t like that you have no control over the resources you get but that’s not a reason to dislike a game, is it? Perhaps my problem with Settlers of Catan lies elsewhere.

As I said, the game more or less introduced me to board games. It’s a simple gateway game that any player can succeed at and learn to think about abstract things like building roads and cities, principles that other games work with on a deeper level. It’s a game that you play with your mom when she asks about the big colourful boxes in your bookcase. It’s a game you show your co-workers when you invite them over. And that’s exactly my problem. 

I’m fully aware that I might sound bitter in the next paragraph or two but bear with me. I’m a geek and as a member of a subculture, I like to define myself based on that subculture. I like other board game players and I’m happy to introduce people to board games the same way I’m happy to invite people over to my place. However, I’m not too thrilled about people inviting themselves to my place and I’m wary of non-geeks talking about how they LURVE board games. I know people who went bananas when I said I played board games, nodding their heads furiously as they recounted how much fun they had with Settlers of Catan and Bang and then blinking in silence when I pulled out Agricola or The Last Night on Earth.

People having fun while playing SoC, 

photo from BGG by verminose

Settlers of Catan did to boardgaming what Sigur Ros did to post-rock, Twilight to vampires and Angry Birds to gaming. Dumbing the topic down to make it accessible to mainstream so that all the managers and consultants can whip out something as exotic as a board game at a party and brag what a geek they are. How quirky!

Perhaps I’m angry that a game which really is nothing special, merely easy to set-up, learn and play, has achieved such a wide recognition that other games deserve. Perhaps I’m bitter about yet another average product that chewed up something I belong to and spread it amongst people of many social cliques. I guess I should be happier that board games are reaching out to people and that they’re losing their status of a fringe entertainment for people who don’t shower.

But there’s another game that’s slightly less popular (I’d say) but rewards players’ skill much more (read: is more skill based), it too has produced countless expansion and re-editions and there’s even a whole castle named after it in France. I’m talking about Carcassonne and no, the castle was built before the game (and it’s quite nice even with all the souvenir shops that sell the game everywhere :) ). I don’t mind its clear moneymaking distribution plan and I don’t freak out because it is sold in toys stores, not only in specialized geek shops. It’s because being successful in Carcassonne is directly proportionate to how well you are playing the game, not how you swindle less skilled players in a trade or have a lucky roll… or five.

In conclusion, it would be very sad if my rant was understood as a simple “Stop liking things I don’t like” cry. Aware of the irony, I believe that if you are introducing someone to board games or even perhaps if you are taking up the hobby yourself, you can do much better than starting with Settlers of Catan.

PS: I posted this first on BGG and an interesting dicussion of both lovers and haters arose. Check it out if you're interested http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/728245/why-i-dont-like-settlers-of-catan-a-rant