At the other end of the scale are hardcore games like Brittania, where there are so many dice rolls that luck evens out and it’s almost pure skill.

And there are all shades inbetween. Just like video games, if you want a good board game read some reviews & pick something that rates well and you like the sound of. There are great board games out there, and undertanding in detail why they are great provides useful insight in to video game design.

It’s because the only real enjoyment that board games such as Monopoly, Sorry, Snakes and Ladders, Life, etc provide is social companionship. There’s really nothing more to these games other than dice rolling.

One you remove the social companionship, you realize how empty and dumb these games really are.

Good older games, ones with actually good mechanics, such as Chess, Scrabble, and so on, survive translation to video because the games themselves are good, not simply the social aspects.

Similarly, all the new Euro-games you’ll find on Board Game Geek, such as Settlers of Catan, survive on video because the games themselves are good games.

Yehuda

I’ve always been fond of Hero Quest, the old edition of Monopoly and a Finnish treasure hunting boardgame called Afrikan Tähti (Afrika’s Star) which I don’t think it available outside scandinavia.

My friends and I used to make our own board games as kids, which turned into writing our own campaigns for RPGs, which then became modding the rules of RPGs.

Switching to level design a few years later was way more fun in terms of both production and play – than consulting tables and rolling dice every time I wanted to do something.

Yehuda makes a good point, however, Go and Shogi are both very good, very old and very well balanced boardgames.