After going into Dominion and this forum and some derivatives (like watching Richard Garfield talk about game design) I started to assess how well or bad designed a game is. Can I ask for your input as to which well known games' design is really good or really bad? (and, if it is not too annoying for you, why?). This is a really ample question, but even a few examples would be great.
This question is just too broad.
I often use Risk as a bad example. Consider a game of Scrabble in which the player who's losing only gets 3 tiles. That's Risk. I like having armies on a map and rolling lots of dice; I'm not big on eliminating players with hours left in the game, voting on who wins, giving me less fun the worse I'm doing.
It's cool that Chess gives different powers to the different pieces. In practice it means that new players not only don't know how to play well, it's hard just seeing what the legal moves are. In general I only play games with people who like a certain amount of randomness; no-one wants to feel stupid because it's technically possible to work out many moves in advance and they aren't doing it.
I often say, it has to be fun to lose. Having fun is really want matters; a game can be anything beyond that. The first chapter of Knizia's book Dice Games Properly Explained consists of nothing but games with no decisions. He doesn't introduce each one with, "if you thought that was stupid, check this out;" instead it's, "here's a fun one, best with 3 to 6 players."
I personally love interacting rules on cards. I like novel experiences. I like psychology. I pursue those things but games can also be fun that are just rituals, or that have lots of anagramming, or you know, whatever it is.
For many years my favorite game was Magic. The novel experiences, the interacting rules on cards. There's a good amount of randomness, there are good decisions. At the same time the rules are unlearnable and sometimes you don't get to play. And it was still the best game ever.
