Musicianle: The Board Game

Draft five musicians from a shared pool. They are scored against five categories, and two of them are hidden until the end. Two to six players on one link, or on your own against bots.

How the board game works

A room deals five categories and a pool of 52 musicians. Three of the categories are shown before the draft and two are hidden until it is over. Players take turns picking, in snake order, until everybody has five musicians.

Each category is then worth one point for every musician in your line-up who satisfies it, plus one bonus point for the least obvious musician who satisfies it anywhere in the room. Highest total wins, and a tie is left as a tie.

Why two categories are hidden

Showing all five would make the draft an optimisation problem with a correct answer, and showing none would make it a lottery. Three visible means you can plan, and the two you cannot see are what makes hedging, and arguing about it afterwards, worth anything.

The bonus for the least obvious pick

Without it the game is "draft the five biggest names", which is not a question about music. The pool holds ten to twelve valid musicians for each category and only some of them get taken, so knowing an obscure one who fits is worth as much as knowing a famous one.

Why the pool is built from the categories

The obvious way to deal this game is to shuffle a random pool of musicians and score it against random categories. It does not work, and the data says so plainly. A random pool of thirty musicians contains on average less than one who satisfies a typical category, and at most about seven for the single largest one. Almost every line-up would score nothing on almost everything, and the draft would be noise dressed up as a decision.

So the five categories are chosen first and the pool is seeded from them, then counted before the room opens. If any category ends up with fewer than eight valid musicians in the pool, the whole draw is thrown away and another is dealt. Roughly half of them are. A category with three possible picks is not a decision either, and refusing the draw is cheaper than shipping a room that is boring in a way nobody can point at.

Why the pool is only well known musicians

The fifty-two are drawn from the most recognisable end of the data rather than from all of it. Choosing between two musicians you have never heard of is not a decision, it is a coin toss, and a pool sampled evenly would be mostly coin tosses.

That is also what makes the bonus for the least obvious pick worth anything. If the whole pool were obscure, obscurity would be free. Because the pool is names most people know, the ones at its edges are the ones you have to actually know something to reach for.

What you are told about a musician, and what you are not

During the draft you see a name and a photograph. You are not told their genres, their country, the decade they debuted in, or how well known they are.

Every one of those is an answer. Showing genres would turn the three visible categories into a filter you apply to a list, which is not a question about music. Showing how well known somebody is would hand over the bonus outright, since the bonus is exactly the least known musician who fits. All of it appears on the result screen, where it explains what happened rather than deciding it, and where you can see which of your picks earned their place.

The honest cost: if you do not know a musician, you have nothing to go on but the name. That is the game, and it is why the pool is restricted to musicians most people can place.

No accounts, and what that costs

A room link is all there is. Your browser holds a random token that is your seat for the life of the room, and it never leaves your device except to make a pick.

The costs, stated rather than discovered. Clearing site data or switching device loses your seat. Anyone with the link can take a seat until the room is full. Neither is worth an account system to prevent on a game with no stakes.

The clock, and playing on your own

A turn lasts two minutes. Past that, the next person to open the room picks for whoever is holding it up, taking the biggest name still available, so a game that starts finishes.

Solo works the same way: seats nobody takes are drafted by a bot that picks the biggest name left. That is a weak opponent and it will feel weak. It is deliberately no smarter than that for now, so that somebody with nobody to play against can still see the game.

How long a room lasts

A room nobody has touched in a day is deleted. A finished game's result survives 30 days, so a link you posted still opens when somebody reads it the following week.

Play the main Musicianle board, try Fill The Grid or Storyboard, or read how the main game works.