“Take That” is a bit of a controversial mechanic, and players tend to either love it or hate it. That has its own concerns where it comes to marketing, but it also reflects design. How do you get players to interact with mechanics when you don’t even know if they want to? Well, there’s a few different ways to force take that into a game.

What is Take That

“Take That” is the term for a mechanic that allows players to, essentially, be mean to one another. For example, normally a +2 to something might be good, but if you had a take that, you might instead be making another player get -2. This is assuming the game is not already directly confrontational (like a war game), but instead has players fighting for a similar goal or resource. There’s a bit of an argument as to what counts. For example, bluffing games can sometimes be considered take that games because it involves lying and/or hindering other players. Usually the biggest deciding factor on it is how necessary it is. If it is essential to the game, then you’re not really being mean, you’re just playing the game. However, there’s some distinction.

Coincidental Take That

Some games let you be mean to players through means of normal play. Perhaps the most famous is the game Sorry or similar games like Parcheesi. You play the game, and if you happen to land on another player, they get sent back to the start. You didn’t specifically target the player, nor did the game give you specific tools to do it, it just happened.

What these systems do give you, though, is plausible deniability. If the game does allow some amount of choice, then you can do something mean to a player and pretend you were forced to do it. Even if the information is public, and they know you were being mean, you can at least say that it was a side-effect of what you were doing, and there were other reasons you did it. One of the biggest issue players have with take that is how needlessly cruel it can be, so these types of games make it feel a little less needless.

Optional Take That

The most common ways game incorporate take that, or perhaps where they are most recognizable, is when they are an option that players can use. These often take the form of action cards, item cards, or player powers. The most popular version of this is probably Munchkin, where multiple cards can be used to increase the power of a player or an enemy.

The benfit to a system like this is that players who don’t like take that can simply not use them. If they are always an option, then why not simply never take that option? This comes with two issues itself, though. First, these players are losing out on the advantage of these cards. If the cards have some cost to play or can be traded in for something else, though, then they would at least get some other type of reward for not using them other than the good feeling of being nice. However, balancing this is difficult, because some players value that nice feeling more than others, and will take that trade-off even if it’s not mathematically advantageous, while others won’t. The second issue is that while you can choose to not use take that on other players if you don’t like being mean, you still end up being the target of other players being mean. You can try and let these cancel each other out, like by allowing take that cards to prevent other take that cards, but having cards contradict other cards can lead to the whole thing feeling like a waste of time.

Forced Take That

Well, if players won’t use take that, then you can make them! This is sort of a combination of the previous two. It happens naturally as a part of the game, like the coincidental take that, but it’s also explicitly aimed at a player, like the optional take thats. The prime example of this I can think of is the Robber from Catan. If you roll a 7, you have to steal a card from someone, as well as shutting off some production.

This can serve as a nice way of introducing or warming up players to take that, but it’s not without its risks. This forces players to interact with each other, and it can be easy to default to the strongest player if you’re unsure, especially in the late game. The first risk is the obvious one: you’re forcing a player to do something they don’t want to. That might scare some people off the game entirely. And even if it isn’t something they are uncomfortable with, it might be something they are unfamiliar with. They might not be able to make a decision on who to target because they don’t want to. In some cases, the player might be so much against hurting other players they’ll choose to target themself.

Now or Never

This one is really the inspiration for this article. In-between optional and forced lies “Now or Never.” The lightest form of which is when are only allowed to have a certain number of cards in your hand and are about to reach that limit. If you aren’t allowed to have more than five cards and you’re about to draw your sixth, then you need to play one of the ones in your hand or you’ll be unable to draw a new one. The most extreme form of now or never is when a player is about to win the game and the only thing that could stop them is a take that card. Again, Munchkin provides the best example. In it, getting to level 10 wins you the game, so if you’re fighting a monster while at level 9, every player basically has to play cards against you or they will lose the game.

This version, like forced take that, is a decent tool for teaching. If you’re willing to stop a player when they’re going to win, then maybe you’ll eventually feel comfortable stopping a player when they are merely almost going to win. Also, depending on some factors, you still get the benefits of optional play. In theory, you’re never forced to play a take that card, and players might not even know you avoided playing a card. If you don’t mind missing out on the value of the card, or would rather lose the game than be mean, then that’s a choice you are making. It can exacerbate some issues with optional take that, though, since giving players an ideal time to play a card makes times where it isn’t played like that feel even more annoying. If a card can be used to stop a player from winning, then when you do it to anyone other than that (or someone who doesn’t feel like they’re winning even though the are), the targetted player tends to get very embittered.

Conclusion

In case it wasn’t obvious, there is no right answer. Look at some of the benefits and issues with each of these when deciding how to make it work for your game. And don’t forget: you could always just not have take that in your game. That’s always an option!