Lack of Progress Syndrome

Comments on my previous post got me to thinking about the “Lack of progress syndrome” phrase that I coined for some games. As kids, remember the game Sorry? Were your pawns always being moved back to the starting square? For me it always seemed like the other kids were ganging up on me. Strangely, there are games we play as adults that lead to the same feelings.

Two games that I mentioned as having Lack of Progress Syndrome (LOPS) are Fantasy Flight’s DOOM boardgame and Alien Menace’s Sucking Vacuum. Interestingly, both of these games are board games and multi player competitive board games at that. I think if there is a game that will suffer from LOPS it will be a Euro style multi player competitive game.

Sucking Vacuum suffers the most from LOPS and I think this is due to the premise of the game. The players are a bunch of scientists stuck on a space station that is losing air. There are a limited number of resources the players can use to reach safety; and, just when you think you’ve made it a desperate player comes along and steals your stuff, who then has his stuff stolen and so on. Beating up your friends and taking their stuff is fun and all, I guess it just happens too often so the game doesn’t move along.

I can’t think of any miniatures games that suffer from LOPS and welcome comments on anyone who might know of any such games. I guess role playing games can suffer from LOPS if the game master is running a low power campaign and is too stingy with treasure but the opposite problem is Too Much Progress Syndrome which might be a topic of its own someday.