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World's Worst Boardgame, marketed as W.W.B., is a board game self-published by Richard Hutnik in 2011 to satirize commercial boardgames that are too dependent on random chance. The game is mathematically impossible to win in a reasonable time; one computer model suggested that to finish 17% of the game would take over 6 million years. Hutnik encouraged users of the Board Game Geek website to give this game the lowest rating of 1 out of 10.
| Designers | Richard Hutnik |
|---|---|
| Publishers | Self-Published |
| Publication | 2011 |
| Genres | Board game |
| Players | 2 |
| Chance | Extremely High |
| Synonyms | W.W.B. |
| Website | wwbgame.com (offline)[1] |
Description
editW.W.B. is a game that is totally dependent on dice rolls, with no strategy involved.[2] Richard Hutnik, as a fan of Eurogames that favour strategy over luck, felt that too many American board games favored luck over strategy. He made the point by deliberately designing a game that was all luck and no strategy,[3] with all profits from the game sales going to charity.[4][5] The only objective of the game is to be the first to reach the Finish card.
A Deluxe set with three variant games (one using trivia questions, one using play money, and the other using role-play) was envisioned but never published.[6][7][8]
Components
editThe game consists of 102 cards, two of them labelled "Start" and "Finish", and the rest numbered from 1 to 100. There are also two 6-sided dice with one side marked "5"; the other sides are blank. (Ordinary six-sided die can be used, with all numbers except 5 ignored.)[3]
Set-up
editThe cards are shuffled and dealt out face up on the table. (The placement of the cards has no effect on the game, but having to do this it adds a few minutes of pointless work to the game.)[9] Players place their tokens on the Start card, wherever it has landed. Players roll the dice and whoever rolls a five moves first. (If two or more players roll a 5, they roll again until only one player rolls a 5.)[9]
Gameplay
editThe first player rolls the dice. If the player does not roll a 5, their turn ends. If the player succeeds in rolling a 5, they roll again and must roll another 5. If they do not, their turns ends, and their token remains where it was. If the player succeeds in rolling two consecutive 5s, they move their token to the "1" card, their turn ends and play passes to the next player. The rest of the game follows in identical fashion, with two consecutive 5s required to move up to the next numerical card. If a player's token reaches a card already occupied by another token, both tokens are returned to the Start card.[9][3] The first player to reach the Finish card is the winner.
Variant Rules
editThere are several variants designed to make the game even longer:
- "Longer game": The players create cards from 101 to 1000, making the game ten times longer.
- "Match Play": A player must be the first to finish first in two games in order to be declared the winner.
- "Use pieces that are of identical shape and color": Each player must use two tokens in the same game. The player to reach the Finish card with both tokens is the winner. If a player accidentally moves the wrong token, the entire game resets to the beginning.[9]
Feasibility
editSeveral computer programs have been used to calculate how long it would take to finish one game. One program took 28,794,244,157 turns to reach card 13,[10] and another took 35,409,637,192,649 turns to reach card 17 before the simulation crashed. At one die roll every 5.6 seconds, it was calculated that it would take approximately 6,171,350 years to reach card 17.[2]
Reception
editThe website GotGameTesters concluded, "I don't know, beating my head against the wall ten times would be much more satisfying than having to play this game. Is that a good description?"[5]
Sean Weeks, writing for Dicebreaker, thought that Hutnik had missed the point about using dice. "As a species, we’ll never completely outgrow superstitions about dice ... Anyone puzzled by the tenacity of 'luckfests' like Left, Centre, Right or Snakes and Ladders needs to understand that they occupy a folkish space, enjoyed through agnosticism toward how many ways two dice can make a seven. Mathematicians only started charting probability and odds in the 16th century. Perceiving chance is a rite guarded by class and education."[11]
References
edit- ^ The Games Ninja. "wwbgame.com is now registered". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2024-11-04.
- ^ a b Beer Money Engine (2024-05-15). The Math Behind... WWB, World's Worst Board Game (Special). Retrieved 2024-10-28 – via YouTube.
- ^ a b c The Game Changer Channel: Classic Games Redefined (2014-11-17). On May Your Die Always Roll 5 and winning W.W.B. Retrieved 2024-10-28 – via YouTube.
- ^ GotGameTesters (2013-11-05). Comment from @richardhutnik. Retrieved 2024-10-28 – via YouTube.
- ^ a b GotGameTesters (2013-11-05). WWB (World's Worst Board Game) - Got Game Testers - Episode 21. Retrieved 2024-10-28 – via YouTube.
- ^ "W.W.B: Trivia". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2024-11-05.
- ^ "W.W.B: Deckbuilder". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2024-11-05.
- ^ "W.W.B: RPG rules... | W.W.B". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2024-11-05.
- ^ a b c d Corp, Tabletopia. "W.W.B". Tabletopia. Retrieved 2024-10-28.
- ^ "Computer Simulation of W.W.B. | W.W.B". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2024-10-28.
- ^ Weeks, Sean (2023-05-29). "Ameritrash is dead - long live Ameritrash". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2024-11-04.