Roll. To. Move!: 221b Baker Street, the Master Detective Game

Or, How to Go Mad by Single-Mindedly Focusing on an Otherwise Forgettable Mechanic.

[This article was originally written for another website, but that website went down a while ago.  Since I wrote it in my WordPress account, then copied and pasted what I had onto that site, I was able to recover 2/3 of the article by reverting what was automatically saved.  The rest of the article is lost, however.  I can’t remember what was there exactly, but I think I remember creating alternative ways to ‘move’ in this game.  If you’re interested in 221B Baker Street (it’s admittedly a good game.) I suggest creating your own workaround to the dreaded dice.  Or at least use an extra die.]

Recently, I played a small pile of games from the 70s and 80s with a friend of mine.  There were a number of misses, but what stood out among them was 221b Baker Street.

The game plays like an advanced version of Clue.  Each player is a detective hunting the streets of London for clues.  The first player to return to 221b Baker Street and correctly guess the killer, murder weapon and the motive is declared Sherlock Holmes, and the other players are a pack of Watsons.  Unlike Clue, each game begins with a three paragraph mystery.  On occasion (though not always) you can pinpoint perfect spaces to procure clues from the plot, or from previous proofs.  For example, was the victim stabbed in a theater box?  Perhaps you should begin you investigation at the theater, yes?

The clues aren’t always perfect and, in the couple games I played, even when I knew all the right clues I wasn’t certain that I knew what I thought I knew.  While that’s a bad quality for a mystery novel to hold, it seems acceptable in a board game.  Since players are never certain if they can back their claims, the game creates a risk versus rewards tension.  “It sure looks like the police officer killed his partner to cover his tracks, but I can’t be sure.  But if I continue to look at every clue in the game, my opponent is bound to beat me to the solution…”

Like its predecessor Clue, 221b Baker Street features roll to move.  To be precise, at the beginning each turn, the active player rolls a six-sided die and move a number spaces equal to the value shown on the die.  And since most locations are seven or more spaces away from the next closest location, that means players spend a lot of turns rolling a die, moving some spaces, then passing their turn.

It’s frustrating, since most turns consist of one rote action, effectively skipping the turn.  The die isn’t even entertaining to roll.  In the 1977 printing I own, the die is undersized.  There’s no heft to it, so no satisfaction comes from dropping it on the table.  I understand why a game producer would want to cut costs, but if a game part is utilized every turn it should at least feel adequate.

But the real problem with rolling to move in 221b Baker Street is that it’s wholly unnecessary.  Players could travel to an adjacent location on each of their turns.  Using this system, you could walk to the Pawn Broker or the Newspaper Shop on your first turn.  From the Pawn Broker shop, you can take a brief jaunt to the Hotel next turn, which you couldn’t do if you went to the Newspaper shop, but from that location you could visit the Chemist.  Need to go across town to the Docks instead?  Then march and spend a few turns walking past other locations.  If anything, this roll to move business is cutting out strong decision making moments in the game, because players sometimes walk into shops because it happens to fall on the number they rolled, not because they’re piecing together a puzzle with a walking pattern in mind.

The unfortunate thing is that it’s possible the game designer also saw this option, but chose ‘roll to move’ because it’s what people expected from their games in 1975.  Back then, board games came with numerous spaces, pawns and dice or a spinner.  If players could declare where they ended up each turn, then we wouldn’t need these extra pieces to keep track of where they were.  All they needed, technically, was a little map at the back of the rulebook.  The board is superfluous.  But you can charge more for a board game than you can for a book, so you need to supply a reason for using that board.  It would be many years before board game enthusiasts and publishers understood that it didn’t matter if the board mattered to sell a board game.  Even non-practical boards add value to a game.

Now this isn’t to say I think there’s no place for ‘roll to move’ in the board game genre.  The mechanic reaps many benefits, among them:

♦  It diminishes the likelihood a particular player will win the game every time.  In 221b Baker Street, for example, the game is skewed toward sleuths who solve mysteries with the least clues.  If those players roll poorly, though, another, luckier player, might occasionally solve the mystery.  We want to reward skill when playing a game like this, but if the same skillful player keeps winning, then that skillful player’s opponents will become frustrated and refuse to play the game.  For a game to be fun, it must be fun for all participants.

♦  It’s recognizable and, thanks to the evolution of board games, easy to intuit.  You don’t need to spend a few minutes explaining how players get from location to location.  Hand them a die and point to the spaces on the map.  Most people can figure out the rest from there.

♦  It’s nostalgic, and reminds players of other games they enjoyed that features roll to move.

♦  It adds variance to a portion of the game where players aren’t supposed to make choices.  For example, this is why roll to move pops up in Monopoly.  Unlike 221b Baker Street, players are making choices about where pawns might end up.  Top hats, Irish setters and thimbles are fated to follow a path which leads all players, except one, to bankruptcy.  Each transaction becomes a game of risk assessment.  What are the chances the next player will roll an eight, ten or eleven?  That being the case, is it worth trading $800 and Pacific Avenue to gain New York Avenue and a monopoly in orange?

♦  It creates tension through unpredictability.

♦  It engages the senses, especially the sense of touch.  Humans are tactile creatures, though, we’re often afraid to initiate contact.  If you want  to flirt with someone, though, or console someone, you use touch.  Games make poor sexy grief counselors, but they still engage with people in a more intimate way if they offer something physical to interact with.

Many of the virtues of roll to move, though, double up as vices:

♠ It favors chance over skill.  While chance may be necessary to keep the game between unequal players interesting, too much chance can make winning feel like a fluke.  And if the game comes down to a coin toss, players will feel cheated if they spent too much of their energy in an attempt to win.    Generally, you want to reward players who take an active role in your game, not disappoint them.

♠  There’s not as much chance involved as most players assume there is.  In a two player game of 221b Baker Street, there may be fifty turns taken per player (including turns where a player rolls the die, moves, then passes.)  Over those fifty turns, a player’s movement should round to 3.5 squares per turn, or 7 squares every other turn.  In the end, all those high and low die rolls should even out, and most of the variability in the game will be minor.  The players won’t see it that way, though.  They will, however, remember the time they rolled three ones in a row.

♠  It’s passé.  Rolling to move was common in the Sixties.  It isn’t dead now, but most designers use it as a choice, for example, to keep the game feeling madcap, or as a throwback to simpler times.  Most serious modern games, however, avoid it.  Many players see ‘roll to move’ as a sign of game design amateurism, or worse, as a sign that the designer is stubborn, and only designs games he or she would like to play.

♠  It’s unimaginative.  Granted, imagination is often overrated.  But designing an interesting new movement mechanic is sometimes seen as a rite of passage among game designers.  Can you trust the imagination of a game designer who never took the time to create an alternative to ‘roll to move’?

♠    It can kill the tension of a game.  While a clutch movement roll can be a tension filled moment, it is often built on the back of fifty other movement rolls that were inconsequential in comparison.  Is that one big moment of excitement worth fifty little boring moments?

♠  It removes an opportunity to add complexity to the game.

♠  For all it’s simplicity, it’s still more complicated than moving your pawn a certain number of squares (like in Dungeons & Dragons), or simply moving your pawn to the location of your choice (like in Shadows Over Camelot.)  Sometimes, the best movement mechanic is no movement mechanic at all.