A Discussion about ‘Rivers and Lakes’

A few days ago I read ‘Rivers and Lakes’ on the Hiew’s Boardgame blog, about his leadership business simulation. Participants take the role of members in rival gangs.

The setting is Hong Kong gangster movies of the 1990’s. Imagine The Godfather in Asia. — From blogpost

Games? Hong Kong Action Flicks? In a training seminar! Naturally, I was intrigued and so I contacted Hiew Chok Sien (“Chok Sien” or CS below) and we had the following discussion (via email).

Note — the following has been lightly edited for clarity/typos and to put some semblance of order¹ to my random questions. Any added emphasis is also mine.

Tao — The “Circle” is a real time simultaneous decision for each gang (?) at the end of a round (?). Do you have multiple moderators who resolving these simultaneously; or do you just segregate teams and do them one at a time, kind of changing the game from ‘real-time’ (when the players are all conversing and plotting) to a pause/resolution phase?

CS — The “circle” is done in the middle of a round. I announce the event for the round first and the gangs decide where to attack (also in simultaneous action selection manner) before the circle. If the seminar is small, I manage everything by myself. I tell the gangs to signal me when they are ready to do their circle. They need to show me when they do it, and I count whether they have enough people committing to the various actions.

If I have a big group, I will get trainer friends to help me, and we each cover one gang. So, the gangs aren’t always doing their circles simultaneously and technically they could send spies to peep at what other gangs are doing. In practice, I’ve never had that; the gangs are busy enough managing themselves. 

Tao — How long is each round, then how long to resolve the circle and conflicts for the round?

CS — The first round, despite the simplicity of the event, can take about half an hour. Later rounds are a little shorter; they are more familiar with the process. However later events can be more complicated. For example in one event, I ask them to discuss who to expel from their gangs. They take time to discuss where to attack. When being attacked, they compare individual stats to see who should play defender. With big groups these can be quite challenging to coordinate. 

Tao — Does the highest ranking Lee family member (for example) have any additional powers over the ‘rank and file’? 

CS — Yes, in every gang the bosses (usually more than one player will have the boss rank) make the final decision about which territory to attack. They have this authority every round. Some events give special authority to specific ranks. E.g. one promotion / demotion event lets bosses make the final call if the gang cannot decide. There is a traitor event where gangs must expel some members. The seniors get to make the final call. There is an event which forces a boss to retire (in game terms, he or she is downgraded to junior; storywise, his/her son or daughter joins the gang as a junior), and the juniors get to make the final call. 

Tao — Also, the Circle (and this simulation in general) seems remarkably democratic for the setting; or for any organization.  This makes sense as a teaching device — you don’t want upper management running the show as a single player game — but … often organizations are like that. Do you get pushback that it doesn’t reflect reality?

CS — So far I have only run this activity in Malaysia, and in this culture we rarely get participants who openly pushback in training settings. The message I convey is that the bosses may set the direction; but, if it is a direction no one is keen about (or if the bosses fail to convince people why the gang should pursue this direction) then other gang members will not be supportive and it will fail.

In a company, typically the boss sets the direction and employees don’t have a say. However if the employees aren’t keen about it; they aren’t going to be enthusiastic in executing their work. So I don’t intend the circle to mean that companies are democratic. Thus I don’t really get this type of pushback.

The pushback I do sometimes get is my students complain that I’m not being fair. They are immersed into the game, and sometimes for example I don’t give them certain information up front, they might complain that it wasn’t fair to them. 

Tao — I’m guessing that you have a round / circle / resolution, then more of a lecture/discussion before the next round. Or is it a brief lecture, full game, then discussion?

CS — I do a simple briefing before the activity starts, dropping hints about what to pay attention to. Normally I do the main debriefing only at the end of the activity, after they have experienced the whole thing and there is good context for discussion.

Sometimes I do a short briefing in the middle if I see my participants are a little lost, or if they are missing something important. I sometimes need to do a bit of steering to guide them and help them learn from the activity. 

Tao — As a gamer …. What do the white vans and blocks on the map represent? 

CS — The white vans are just attack markers. Typically every round a gang can only attack one territory. You place the van on the border between your own territory and the adjacent one you are attacking. I use the van because it’s evocative. The marker does help as a visual reminder too.

The wooden blocks (and metal spanners and metal cups) are ownership markers. 

Tao — Please tell me that you use a Croupier stick to push the pieces around. I need to play a game where I do that, just like in the movies.

CS — Ha!  I’m afraid I don’t use a Croupier stick. The map is big (about 5 feet x 6 feet), but even the most central part of the map is reachable by an outstretched arm. Sometimes when a player is not able to reach a piece, he or she walks around the table to get to it, or asks another person to help. 

Tao — Do you have any Live Action Roleplaying (LARPs) experience or influences? What Games or Business Simulations influenced this?

CS — I have not done LARP before. Rivers and Lakes is a simple dudes-on-a-map game, so it’s from the Risk / Axis & Allies lineage. It’s just a map and area control. That’s the organisational goals part of it. The personal goal part is not from any particular game. It’s based on the leadership concept I wanted to convey – that as a leader if you want your people to be committed, the organisation must help them succeed and achieve their personal goals. 

Tao — When I first read your blog post, I thought “Ah, he’s teaching the Principal-Agent Problem,” a huge issue in organizations, arguably “the” primary problem. But that doesn’t often show up in games². I also thought this was “Mixed with a bit of werewolf/social deduction,” because you have to read which people on your team, may be not particularly interested in the outcome.

Is the Principal/Agent problem a big focus of the discussion? What are the big themes of the discussions you have at the post mortem? Are there specific themes you discuss after certain rounds introduce the topic.

CS — The leadership challenge I explore using this activity is somewhat related to the principal-agent problem, but I don’t specifically discuss it. One theme I do discuss is how observant we are as leaders when we work with our people. Do we understand what’s most important to them? Do we understand what motivates them? One other topic I discuss is the roles of people in different ranks – boss, senior and junior. 

Tao — I realize now that some of my assumptions are probably based on my LARP experience, and flawed because even the shorter LARPs I’ve played are normally a full day (at least) with experienced gamers. Do the different ranks in Rivers and Lakes differ only in their personal goals and titles and personal stats (money/skill/relationship)? From my initial reading I assumed that money, skill & relationship were identical (except that since some players value one over the other it will mean there isn’t agreement about which areas to attack and defend). Is that correct? 

CS — Personal goals and starting stats are not related to the ranks. Everyone draws a random personal goal. I have them pick their character before I explain any of the stats. Some might look for characters with higher stats, but the stats are not prominent and most do not realise those numbers are stats.

On average the characters stats are 200. Some have higher stats in one area and lower in another.

The most important difference between the ranks is a bonus ability. Whenever Bosses earn money, they get 30% more. Seniors earn 30% more skills. Juniors earn 30% more relationships. This ability may not align with your personal goal. You might be a junior trying to earn a lot of money. You will try to find a way to become a boss (but it’s not easy, because there are very few opportunities to do this). 

Some players will get lucky, e.g. they pick a character with 300 skills, 200 money and 100 relationship, and they happen to be a senior, and their goal is to have high skill. I do not deliberately force an equal starting point for everyone. If I get pushback, I say, sorry, life is not fair. 

Tao — During the rounds (pre-circle) do people from different clans often get together and talk? Do they have any incentive to? Can the juniors trade things (besides information) for their own personal benefit? I’d imagine that rivals seen chatting would face backlash; but do the rules provide them some benefit if they can do it and get away with it?

CS — There is no benefit for individuals to talk with those from other gangs. They can’t trade things. From my sessions, what people like to do is to taunt other teams³. In a playful, good natured way. Now sometimes when the group is big, I have three gangs instead of two. This is when there is incentive for gangs to negotiate with one another. Two gangs can collaborate to bring down the third, before they later fight each other. 

Tao — It sounds like having three gangs would change the focus from leadership to negotiation⁴. Three-player games are notoriously difficult to balance. Given that, for larger groups have you considered keeping only two teams, but each team having multiple circles (and perhaps their own attack)?⁵ 

CS — I’ve tried sticking to two gangs when I have a large group of students, more people who felt disengaged. They had little to do. With an additional gang, more people get involved in discussions and strategising. To be honest, I don’t do precise balancing for this activity. My audience is not gamers and they don’t really notice or worry about imbalance.

Rivers and Lakes is played over only around 6 rounds and generally you only get to attack one territory per round. So normally things don’t go out of balance much. One form of balancing I do is when setting up territories, I create two (or three) attractive starting positions far apart, the gangs almost always pick them as their home bases. I do this so that in early rounds they won’t attack one another. They peacefully expand and get familiar with the game mechanism. Also, I don’t need to explain how fighting works yet. 

Here’s one interesting experience: During one session with two gangs, the second gang had their CEO in it. The second gang deliberately chose to start right next to the first and in the opening round attacked. This was risky, but the gambit paid off.

The early successful attack crippled the other gang; the CEO’s gang maintained their lead for the rest of the activity. This felt imbalanced, but was the result of a deliberate strategy. We had an interesting debrief about why the second gang chose this strategy and whether this would be advisable in real business. We also discussed the behaviour and actions of the other gang which was under immense pressure for the whole game. 

Tao — I also like the restrictions of the circle from the sense of “No matter how long you have, organizations can only focus on one or two things at a time and must prioritize”. Even powerful organizations have economic constraints. If you do A, you can’t do B.

CS — Right. This was a deliberate design decision. Some events require a 50% commitment for the gang to gain anything, and some territories require a 60% commitment to capture. It’s impossible to do both. The gang must choose. Some members will prefer one over the other. That’s when they need to learn to convince their own teammates. 

Tao — Regarding the social deduction issue. A friend of the blog took an M.B.A. graduate course featuring a negotiation game⁶. One of the ‘tricks’ of the game required players to realize that (at least) one party’s stated goals were nothing like their actual goals.

In the background there’s a slide saying “TRAITOR!” but the victory conditions are “your clan has to win” and you have to be in the top 30% of your personal goal.

Are there actual traitors who don’t care about the clan’s goal at all? Do you put that in as a herring to discuss the costs of witch hunts⁷.

CS — I don’t frame this as a social deduction activity. I only tell them they have a personal goal, they have to fulfil it, and they can’t show anyone their personal goal card. However I do not tell them (or even hint that) they need to find out what personal goals their teammates or enemies have. I hope I didn’t cause any misunderstanding regarding this social deduction aspect. There is no social deduction aspect. 

What I tell the gangs are (1) your gang wins when it has a higher reputation. (2) Do your best to fulfil your personal goal. I don’t tell them up front that the measure of success for the latter is they have to be in the top 30%. They only find out at the end of the activity. I also don’t tell them up front that by being in the top 30% they will score points for their gangs. 

So far I haven’t encountered any players who only cared about their own success and not their gang’s. (Or they hid it well enough from me). However I have encountered situations when players cared more about their gang’s success and they were willing to sacrifice their own. They made decisions based on what was best for the gang. 

I know of (and have done) activities where I tell teams there is a traitor among them, and this sometimes completely messes them up. I don’t use this in Rivers and Lakes. The “Traitor” slide is referring to an event, in which I tell the gangs they have to expel 2 members. The expelled members join the other clan. This is meant to simulate situations like a company needing to retrench workers. It’s something difficult for organisations to do. How do they discuss and decide? 

Tao — Has the simulation’s complexity evolved much as you run it and streamline it? What have you added or dropped? Has there you said “As a gamer, I love this, but this doesn’t work?”

CS: Oh yes, I’ve simplified several things. Originally gangs gained or lost reputation based on whether they attacked or defended successfully. This was on top of the reputation they would gain or lose if they won or lost a territory.

I also had a rule where if you attack a territory and you control more than one territory adjacent to it, the resistance of the target territory is reduced. This encourages gangs to surround a difficult territory before going in for the kill. Yet another thing I had originally was gangs had to do both of these together: decide on which territory to attack and doing the circle. This is more difficult because when you don’t know yet whether the other gang is attacking you, it’s hard to decide whether you want to allocate defenders. To a gamer, this is more interesting. The current rule is gangs first simultaneously decide where they are attacking, and they then reveal this, before they do the circle. So you already know whether you are getting attacked by the time you need to decide about your circle.

As a gamer, this is less interesting, but works better for my students (who are mostly non gamers). Even in my current version, some people have difficulties understanding the rules. 

Tao — Have you run into people messing around with the game maybe because they simply don’t care? ⁸ I think most problems are going to be due to introversion and confusion (which is a legitimate discussion to have about leadership) but I can see older managers grumbling “this isn’t real training.” Do you encounter much resistance?

CS — Oh yes, I do get students who are disengaged, especially with a large group. Once I had a group of 90. There were people who had trouble following, and after a while they lost interest and just sat back and let others instruct them what to do (e.g. which stone to use). There will be people who don’t have patience to learn new game rules. Certainly the setting and the components attract many; there are always people who are keen to play and want more. But yes, some are disengaged. Some participants come with the mindset that this is for the younger / junior people, and I’m too old / senior for this. Sometimes I can change their minds, sometimes I can’t.

So far my main challenges are (1) people find this too complicated to follow and (2) when the group is big, some people let others take care of business. 

Tao — How big a part of your leadership training is this? Do you run this multiple times a week and normally just have seminars? Looking at your website (https://www.simplifypeople.com/) I see

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