In many board games, either a win condition is reached for one player that ends the game for everyone at once, or some sort of scoring system is used to determine the winner after the gameplay ends.
An issue with games like Pandemic is that a more experienced or dominant player can tend to take charge of the whole team, with everyone else following their orders instead of autonomously making their own decisions. Especially if following the experienced player's advice really does maximize the chance of winning, it basically becomes a single-player game with spectators who help move the pieces around.
I think adding in secret information or hidden objectives can help prevent this.
The fancier term for this is "The Quarterback" problem.
It happens at every Pandemic game, but there are ways around it. Even something as simple as a total-game-timer helps. Another rule that helps is enforcing the "consent" part of the rules (for 2-player interactions, including the one where you're allowed to move other players), and ensuring autonomy is respected in the game, even if its a sub-optimal move.
+1 to secret information/hidden objectives. I guess Pandemic:Legacy uses that?
Alternatively, hidden traitor (Shadows over Camelot, Dead of Winter, Battlestar Galactica)! Then you can't trust the "Quarterback" because they could be LYING!!!
Other games solve this via real-time constraints. Thinking Escape from the Cursed Temple and Space Alert. There's not enough time for on person to coordinate everyone, so everyone needs to communicate and take initiative.
1) One or more game-ending game states which may or may not also be win conditions for the person causing them, without any possibility for a player to be "out" before that.
2) Set duration (usually in rounds played).
Usually wins determined, in either case, either by "you were the first to do X so you win" or a scored resolution.
It's usually possible to be de facto eliminated in these games (anyone who's played much Catan has been there, to pick a familiar example) but the best of them keep that from happening until late in the game. Quite a few, frankly, do not do a good job of that but do make it hard to tell who's winning so at least you don't know you've effectively already lost by the halfway point of the game.
[EDIT] for an easy example many might be familiar with: look at most trick-taking card games, like Spades, Hearts, or Bridge. No elimination (unlike, say, poker), but you still get a winner or winning partnership at the end.
"Dominion", "Settlers of Catan", "Splendor" are great games of this nature.
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Acquire has "When all companies are monopolies (11 tiles or larger) or when one company is of size 42, the game is over". So the game is on an implicit clock.
Settlers of Catan is a deeply flawed game. It's far better than monopoly but is definitely too dice-heavy and kingmaker oriented. Dominion is in a lot of ways among the worst games in the genre it created as most of the variants that followed added more interesting mechanics and tradeoffs. It should get a lot of credit for being original so I guess I'm fine with calling it a great game. Splendor is a classic.
I honestly haven't seen any pure deckbuilding game that's as good as Dominion. It works very well in Quest for El Dorado, but that's not pure deckbuilding (great game, though).
I also disagree that Catan is deeply flawed. Of course no game is perfect, but Catan does what it does very well. Kingmaking can be an issue in any multiplayer game with any sort of interaction, but in Catan, it's pretty clear how to get points. If people are throwing the game just to spite someone, then you just need to play with better people. Dice are absolutely central to the game, but that's not necessarily bad. Luck being a factor does not make a game deeply flawed. If you prefer chess, you just need to play chess instead.
I feel like there are better games than Catan these days, but it was great when people were only thinking about relatively bad games like Monopoly or Risk as their Friday night hangout game.
Agree with that. I just think it's sad that the state of the art for gaming in non-specialist stores is Catan and Ticket to Ride. If places like Indigo were a bit more ambitious in their title selection many people would be playing much better games.
