Balance

Balance is when game parts or choices are similar in value.

Yes, balance is good

Balance is generally desirable, as it means each option is viable, giving the player real choice. It also means the game is probably fairer, and there are no parts of the game that no one ever uses.

Don't worry about it

Balance is not that important.

Plenty of other things are more important... like fun.

Balance is also very easy to achieve. Almost anything can be balanced, which means that you can really do whatever you like, and just balance it all later.

Balance is not the same thing as fun. Do not excuse un-funness for balance reasons.

Chess is still a great game, even though white wins more than black. It's even less important that rooks are better than knights.

I know some cards I make are imbalanced (too strong, or too weak.) That's fine. It just happened that the simple, clean version of the card was imbalanced.

Choose elegance over balance.

As long as the card has some value, and isn't "feelbad" for anyone, I'm happy with it.

The other thing about cards is that a player has many of them. Some will be imbalanced individually, but a hand is likely to be balanced overall.

I do try to make all options balanced, but each option need only be balanced enough to be worthy of consideration by the player. If there are two options, and one is chosen only 25% of the time, that's still fine.

How do I know what's balanced?

Someone recently asked me how I balanced Radlands. The real answer is that when balancing something, I just guess, and then play the game. If something seems too strong, I make it weaker. If it's too weak, I make it stronger.

If I want something a bit more precise, I'll try to balance something by comparing it to something similar.

If you really want to balance, try to convert everything into your game's "lowest common denominator" resource, so you can roughly compare things.

Don't make a science of it

Don't try to do mathematical calculations to balance your game. I've been guilty of trying to balance things with a spreadsheet.

Also, don't try to gather data from playtesters, to balance. You should be spending their time and yours on making games, not on minutiae. And, if you do any of this kind of precise calculation, it all goes out the window when you (or the publisher) makes any change.

Considerations for balance

Don't forget that actions/turns are a cost. One action might cost twice as much as another, and give twice as much reward. However, both actions consume the player's turn, thereby making the bigger action better. Some cards, in particular, are fair with a cost of zero, because they still cost a card.

Some things are overkill. If I get twenty axes, is that actually useful? It might be fun to have that many axes, but twenty axes is probably only twice as good as three axes.

What if something is slow?

Some things are "win more". They give a benefit in a system or game where you're already going to win. If you can afford the Imperial Cannon of Doom, you're probably strong enough anyway.

There cannot be an absolute system for balance, and the correct strength for something will often seem outrageously strong. Things are often much weaker than you believe them to be. You just need to experience the thing in play. That should be your guide, not so much logic or mathematics. Don't baulk at making some things cost zero, or making them triple the strength you thought they should be.

Balance with numbers

A good designer balances by changing numbers. A bad designer adds rules and text.

Make sure your cards (or other components) have a number on them. It could be a cost. It could be a points value. This allows easy fine-tuning of balance.

In Radlands, each player starts with three camp cards. These are important. When I started designing these camps, I knew balancing them would be difficult, so I added a numerical component. Every camp card has a number in its corner, and each player draws a starting hand equal to the total of these numbers on their camps. This way, weaker camps can be balanced by having a higher number, and vice versa.

Just make the simplest and coolest version of each object, and then balance it by tweaking its numbers.

Intentional imbalance

Sometimes, you want to imbalance things.

In deck-builder game Dominion, you start the game with a deck of ten bad cards. You add good cards to it, and try to remove the bad ones. The Chapel card can remove four cards from the deck in one turn. This card is amazingly good, but the designer knew that. The idea is that a game with Chapel in it will be distinctly different from other games.

I like to imbalance things that are necessary for the game to progress, or otherwise remain healthy. Every option should be worthy of consideration, but I make these options have a clear edge over the others.

In an earlier version of my gangster game, location cards would come and go throughout the game. I wanted the board to keep changing. I could've said "every turn, or round, draw a new location card." However, I didn't want any kind of turn structure, where players had to remember to draw a new location. I wrangled with this for a long time, before settling on a fantastic and easy answer. I created a clearly imbalanced Getaway Car space, that people wanted to go to, but which also drew a new location card.

Balancing the fun

Don't forget that options should be similar in fun, as well as in strength. This can be really hard to achieve.

In my gangster game, players can take various actions. Some will increase their health. Staying alive is necessary, but it's also boring. Players greatly prefer the actions that give them money, because money is cool — it can be spent on all kinds of stuff. To make health more interesting, I created some new and exciting places for the player to go, but only if they have enough health.

In an earlier version, you would sometimes draw cards. These were interesting, so I paired them with those boring health locations.

In the old Fighting Fantasy "Sorcery" game books, you could be a wizard, and cast all kinds of cool spells, or you could be a warrior, who had... two extra Skill points.

In my adventure game, abilities were originally paid for with health points. However, abilities were cool, and using them was way more fun than staying alive, so players would riskily use these abilities. They'd usually be walking around with one or two health, and frequently die. In the end, I made a separate resource that only pays for abilities, so you're comparing abilities against other abilities, not against boring health.

In Radlands, you have three water to spend each turn. However, there are almost no abilities that cost three water. It's a much more interesting choice to choose one of your abilities that costs two, plus one that costs one. One three-cost ability is usually a boring turn.

Imbalance as excitement

Balance is not always good.

In simpler, more fun-based games, imbalance can add excitement. It might not seem like a good idea for some things to be clearly better than others, but when you get them, it's exciting.

In Scrabble, some tiles are blatantly better than others. The blanks are the best tiles by a huge margin. That's imbalanced and a bit unfair, but there's excitement to be had every time you reach into the bag and draw your tiles.