This Is How You Make Newbies Quit!!!
If you want to win at a board game or a card game, two things usually have to be on your side.
Luck, or brains.
And depending on whether a game leans more on fortune or strategy, the degree to which luck decides the outcome changes completely.
As for Blue Marble… well, I wouldn't go so far as to call it a board game with zero strategy, but at the end of the day, dice luck was what mattered most.
Which meant one thing.
Even if I wanted to go easy on Aria while we played Blue Marble, I simply couldn't.
I wasn't some superpowered being who could control the roll of the dice. How exactly was I supposed to throw a game?
Of course, the reverse was also true — Aria could just as easily wipe the floor with me.
In the end, victory belonged to whoever the god of dice decided to favor.
So who won, you ask?
"…Uh. Well."
I did.
Overwhelmingly.
I held the advantage from start to finish, and from Aria's perspective, not even the faintest glimmer of a comeback opportunity ever appeared…
The atmosphere was heavy.
When you win, you're supposed to win by a reasonable margin — the loser feels a little disappointed, the winner feels good, and the mood stays warm. Instead, the defeat had been so thorough that the winner was the one walking on eggshells…
Looking at it that way, I was almost glad we'd started with Blue Marble first.
If this kind of disaster had struck on the final game of the night, after I'd already declared it the last round… yeah.
That was when it happened.
"Um… th-that was fun!"
…Aria's voice trembled.
She was doing everything she could to sound fine, but the emotions welling up inside her made the act nearly impossible to pull off.
At the end of the day, Aria was still a child.
Children throw themselves into games far more completely, and when they lose, the frustration hits that much harder.
Some kids cry their eyes out over a lost game, don't they?
Was Aria really so different? She was still just a kid.
Though in her case, she was different in one important way — she was suppressing her own feelings, desperately trying not to ruin the mood.
The problem was, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like her time living under abuse at the Duchy had drilled a compulsion into her: if you cry, the people around you only scold you harder for it, so even when you want to cry, you have to hold it in… That was probably why she looked the way she did now.
And looking at it that way, the face Aria was showing me right now was not a pleasant one to see.
Besides… would the reliable pillar of support in a headpat story protagonist's life just sit there and do nothing after seeing her like that?
Absolutely not.
So this was the moment to take action.
The safest option was… well, shifting her attention to a different game — one Aria actually had a chance of winning.
Something unlike Blue Marble, something I could deliberately lose at.
Of course, that was easier said than done. If I slipped up and she realized I'd thrown the match on purpose? That would be worse than not playing at all.
So I had to lose naturally enough that she wouldn't notice… but did people think losing naturally was easy? Losing naturally was a skill in its own right.
The most natural way was to go back and forth in a fierce, neck-and-neck fight and then lose by a single point — but just hearing that made it sound hard, didn't it?
If I hadn't completely demolished her, we could have just brushed it off with some light banter and moved on to the next round… If we'd played a few more games, the god of dice would surely have favored Aria at least once… We could have traded wins and losses a few times, and the moment she tasted that high of a peak-performance victory, she'd have been hooked on board games forever…
God of dice, shameless hype is fine and all, but you were supposed to keep it reasonable…!
This is how you make newbies quit!!!
Anyway — what to do. Play it safe, or not?
…Alright. Decision made.
Safe option it is!
Dump Blue Marble!
I'd prepared plenty of other board games and card games besides Blue Marble!
Losing naturally is hard? Sure — but hard isn't the same as impossible.
"Well, we've tried this one… want to try something else? Is there anything you'd like to play?"
I said it casually, but in my mind the next board game was already narrowed down.
Uno, or Da Vinci Code.
Uno made the shortlist because it was extremely easy to throw on purpose; Da Vinci Code made it because the odds of an utterly one-sided defeat were vanishingly low.
That said, after the pure luck-fest she'd just endured with Blue Marble, putting her through another game where everything hinged on chance didn't seem like something Aria would particularly welcome…
So maybe Da Vinci Code, which actually required some skill, would be the better choice———
"…Um, I, uh… one more round would be okay."
"…Huh?"
No… seriously? After getting demolished that thoroughly, she wanted to play Blue Marble again?
If I'd been Aria, I'd have been so thoroughly done with the game that I'd be cursing it as pure garbage by now.
I wondered for a second if a competitive fire had ignited in her… but if that were the case, she should have shown at least a flicker of frustration, and no matter how I looked at her, she didn't seem frustrated at all.
I didn't even entertain the possibility that she was hiding her feelings.
If she had been, her voice wouldn't have trembled a moment ago.
If I suggested switching to a different board game right now, what would Aria think the reason was?
Was there any chance she wouldn't conclude that I'd been considerate because she'd lost and failed to compose herself, and had ruined the mood as a result?
Putting myself in her shoes, I would have thought exactly that.
Of course, with an ordinary child, there was some chance they wouldn't think that way.
Kids around Aria's age still tend to retain a certain degree of self-centered thinking.
Those kids lose at a board game? Their own frustration comes first, and they might not spare a thought for how the other person feels watching them.
But… Aria wasn't an ordinary child.
She was a kid whose home environment had clearly made her hyper-attuned to other people's moods.
Self-centered thinking, from a child like that? Completely out of the question.
So the probability that Aria believed she'd ruined the atmosphere, that I'd been considerate about it, that this counted as being a burden on me, and that she was offering another round to make up for it… was basically one hundred percent.
…What now.
Play another round?
And then what if Aria gets demolished again?
…I didn't even want to imagine that.
But she'd said another round was fine, and turning her down after that would also be… if I refused even after she said it was okay, she'd just end up thinking she'd been a burden after all.
"…Alright. One more round!"
In the end, my heart tipped toward playing.
What if Aria won this time? Her dopamine would go nuclear — and I was supposed to pass that up?
There was risk, sure, but the return was just as real. I was going for the return.
"This time, put some real effort into rolling good numbers, okay?"
I tossed out a lighthearted joke, just to ease the mood a little.
If the atmosphere lightened up, Aria would be able to enjoy this round even a little more comfortably.
And then I prayed.
…God of dice. You're watching, right?
Hook her up with a beginner's luck…!
Save the newbie!!!
As this round unfolded, there was one piece of good news and one piece of bad news.
The good news first: unlike the previous game, this one wasn't painting a picture of total annihilation.
The bad news: she just wasn't getting annihilated — Aria was still losing. And losing consistently, from start to finish.
…Honestly, at this point you could call the defeat all but locked in.
Not that a comeback was impossible.
A comeback? Technically possible, yes.
The problem was that the odds were so low they might as well not exist.
Even if I landed on Aria's properties, it barely moved the needle on a comeback.
Because the probability of Aria landing on my properties was vastly higher than the reverse.
For me to actually lose for certain, I'd have to land on her expensive properties three times in a row… and she barely owned any land to begin with, so how was that supposed to happen…
The god of dice was dead after all…
Thinking that, I rolled the dice.
"…Huh?"
One. One.
Two spaces forward… and I'd land on Aria's property.
And since I'd rolled doubles, I had to roll again.
No way…?
Clinging to a slim thread of hope I couldn't quite let go of, I rolled again.
Two. Two.
I landed on Aria's property again.
And doubles again — so another roll.
If an eleven came up here… I'd land on the most expensive property Aria owned, and I'd lose.
…Hold on. Was this actually going to be a miracle comeback?
On Aria's face — which until moments ago had been resigned to defeat — hope and desperate longing began to bloom, little by little.
I rolled the dice.
Five.
And six.
Eleven.
She won.
Aria did.
"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH?!!?!?!?!"
In that instant, a scream pierced my ears.
Aria's scream.
And she had every right to scream.
Just what percentage of probability had she just punched through for that miracle reverse victory?
I was dumbfounded.
Wow… losing like this, all I could do was sit there in pure admiration…
"Did I— did I win?!"
"…Yeah. You won, Aria."
"I— I thought I was going to lose again…!!! Wow, wow, woooow…!!!"
Unable to contain her feelings, Aria clenched both fists tight and bounced up and down on the spot.
After pulling off a miracle comeback and getting hit with a full dopamine shower, of course it felt electric.
Watching Aria beam like that, I thought: I'm glad we played another round.
Was this the first time I'd ever seen her this happy?
Come to think of it, I'd never seen Aria look happy at all.
"So? Board games are fun, right?"
The second she heard me, Aria nodded so hard and so fast her head might have fallen off.
Yeah. We really did the right thing playing again.
Even with the risk, going for the return had been the right call!
When it comes down to it, people should take high risk, high return over low risk, low return every single time!