This is a continuation of The Set Design Approach. In that post, I skipped over 'story analysis' as a step that theatrical designers take in their design process, partially for length but partially because script analysis is a topic in its own right.
When directors and designers 'break down' a script, they are looking for specific elements to give insight into the themes and structure of a play. Board game designers can use story analysis techniques to examine their own designs for thematically consistent, dramatically logical narratives. By narrative, I do not mean only narrative-driven games. Any game that has a theme tells a story, in that it has a setting, characters, actions, events, and an ending in which the world-state is noticeably different than the beginning. For the rest of this post, when I talk about game design I am referring to games with recognizable themes. Abstract games, including those with a pasted on theme such as Seikatsu, would not benefit much from story analysis.
The first step in story analysis is a scenic breakdown: creating a list of locations that occur in the story. This step, and many of the following, will seem unnecessary for board game design. Do it anyway. You should be able to easily articulate the setting and other story details when describing your game. Also, by actually breaking down these elements, you can find any areas that are not fully developed or are disconnected from other elements. For your locations, you should be able to describe the world of the game in simple terms that aid and do not hinder the learning of the game. Put another way, knowing where the game is set should add to the internal logic of gameplay. Part of your location breakdown should include when the game is set in the overall world history of the game world. Historical games require historical research. Fantasy games (in the sense that fantasy means "not real life") require having a sense of the world state at the beginning of the game.
Next, we turn to dramatic structure. Dramatic structure requires a logical progression of events from the beginning to the conclusion. Drama starts with exposition, which is where the situation and rules of the world are laid out. In most board games, exposition for the world should exist in the rules explanation. As in, "Here's why you are gathering resources and turning them into points." Most board game narratives start at the point of attack: the action(s) that kick off the drama of the story. Theatre assumes that there are no dramatic actions before the first action in the play. After all, if there were wouldn't the play be about that instead? The most interesting, dramatic actions in board games should be the ones the players take. The players should not be disappointed by playing a game after hearing exciting and dramatic lore. The central dramatic question that kicks off the point of attack is the inciting incident. This would be the event that occurred immediately before a game starts. Everything after the inciting incident is action (including the point of attack). However, much as we discovered when looking at scene work for actors, actions viewed from a dramatic structure viewpoint are more emotionally charged than we are used to thinking about in board games. Consider this quote: "The playwright then goes on to create a series of events or actions through which the emotional responses and tensions of an audience will vary based on how closely we come to achieving the major dramatic question." (Dunham, Stage Lighting p 174) In game design, the actors are also the audience. The thematic tension is tied to how close the players are to winning or losing. Thus, the emotional responses to the theme should be closely tied to the mechanical win conditions. With this understood, you can take rising and falling action, climax, and resolution from traditional dramatic structure and translate them to gameplay moments. The key is tying the narrative moments to the meta-narrative of the gameplay.
Stories are made up of time, place, actions, and characters. I find most published board games have a decent grasp of time, place, and action but get hazy when it comes to character. Characters should be used to help illuminate why certain actions are being taken and how those actions relate to the central dramatic question. Again, as we saw in the scene work post, knowing your character's motivation in the form of knowing their goals helps the player understand why they are doing what they are doing. All of the players can be playing the same unnamed units, with the same powers, but they should still know what those units are and why they take the actions they take. Pillars of the Earth is an excellent example of unnamed workers who have clear motivation and logic behind the actions they take. That game tells a story, even though the players are not playing a named protagonist. It should be noted that Pillars of the Earth still abstracts the actions of the 'master builders'. Board games, like theatre, will always require suspension of disbelief. As long as the internal logic is sound, abstraction for the benefit of mechanics is not only okay, but required.
I have mentioned the central dramatic question a couple of times. Also called the super-objective or the dramatic spine, this question is the core to the theme of a narrative. A dramatic question can be posed as a question that gameplay is seeking to answer, such as "Who is the best merchant in the Mediterranean?" or "Can my team stop the apocalypse before time runs out?" Theme should be more specific than genre though. A contest to see who is the best merchant is a theme, whereas trading in the Mediterranean is a genre. Theme is also closely aligned with mood (see previous post about image research). Your theme, mood, and narrative should be closely entwined. To check if they are, see if the following statement is true about your game: "The theme is X because the narrative is Y which creates a mood of Z." The more 'because' statements you can come up with, the more connected your theme and mood and narrative. This is easier to achieve if your main theme is present throughout your game. When a theme is deeply connected to a game, certain mechanisms will be rejected because they adversely affect the mood or narrative of a game. Befriending the eldritch horror or murdering the other merchant competitors may stem from fun and interesting game mechanics but don't advance the central narrative of your game. Of course, you could change the narrative. However, in my experience, once you have built the internal logic of your game world you will find it difficult to change any element that goes against the spirit (or ethics) of your game. This is doubly true if you are invested in the theme. Wingspan was only ever going to be a game about birds, because of Elizabeth Hargrave's integration and investment in the theme. This is perhaps not the literary definition of theme, and as board game design progresses we are seeing more 'higher meaning' behind the themes of games, but I believe that starting with theme integration naturally leads to deeper, universal themes. The more you think about your underlying narrative, the more theme you can get back out of it.
This is a lot of terms to consider, but I believe you can boil it down to some simple questions to answer when analyzing your design:
-Do the locations make sense and connect to the overall design?
-Can the rules be explained in the context of the narrative?
-Does the tension of gameplay line up with the dramatic tension of the narrative?
-Do the players know who they are playing and why that matters?
-Does the purported theme of the game mesh well with the narrative that plays out? With the mood?
I firmly believe that having a theme in a design means having a story. Theme is story; art is story. Narrative-driven games require that more effort be put into their stories, but every themed game should have consideration for its story. Anything less is merely an abstract game with art.
For this post, I relied heavily on Stage Lighting: Fundamentals and Applications, by Richard Dunham, found here, as my scenic design teacher didn't teach from a text book.
When directors and designers 'break down' a script, they are looking for specific elements to give insight into the themes and structure of a play. Board game designers can use story analysis techniques to examine their own designs for thematically consistent, dramatically logical narratives. By narrative, I do not mean only narrative-driven games. Any game that has a theme tells a story, in that it has a setting, characters, actions, events, and an ending in which the world-state is noticeably different than the beginning. For the rest of this post, when I talk about game design I am referring to games with recognizable themes. Abstract games, including those with a pasted on theme such as Seikatsu, would not benefit much from story analysis.
The first step in story analysis is a scenic breakdown: creating a list of locations that occur in the story. This step, and many of the following, will seem unnecessary for board game design. Do it anyway. You should be able to easily articulate the setting and other story details when describing your game. Also, by actually breaking down these elements, you can find any areas that are not fully developed or are disconnected from other elements. For your locations, you should be able to describe the world of the game in simple terms that aid and do not hinder the learning of the game. Put another way, knowing where the game is set should add to the internal logic of gameplay. Part of your location breakdown should include when the game is set in the overall world history of the game world. Historical games require historical research. Fantasy games (in the sense that fantasy means "not real life") require having a sense of the world state at the beginning of the game.
Next, we turn to dramatic structure. Dramatic structure requires a logical progression of events from the beginning to the conclusion. Drama starts with exposition, which is where the situation and rules of the world are laid out. In most board games, exposition for the world should exist in the rules explanation. As in, "Here's why you are gathering resources and turning them into points." Most board game narratives start at the point of attack: the action(s) that kick off the drama of the story. Theatre assumes that there are no dramatic actions before the first action in the play. After all, if there were wouldn't the play be about that instead? The most interesting, dramatic actions in board games should be the ones the players take. The players should not be disappointed by playing a game after hearing exciting and dramatic lore. The central dramatic question that kicks off the point of attack is the inciting incident. This would be the event that occurred immediately before a game starts. Everything after the inciting incident is action (including the point of attack). However, much as we discovered when looking at scene work for actors, actions viewed from a dramatic structure viewpoint are more emotionally charged than we are used to thinking about in board games. Consider this quote: "The playwright then goes on to create a series of events or actions through which the emotional responses and tensions of an audience will vary based on how closely we come to achieving the major dramatic question." (Dunham, Stage Lighting p 174) In game design, the actors are also the audience. The thematic tension is tied to how close the players are to winning or losing. Thus, the emotional responses to the theme should be closely tied to the mechanical win conditions. With this understood, you can take rising and falling action, climax, and resolution from traditional dramatic structure and translate them to gameplay moments. The key is tying the narrative moments to the meta-narrative of the gameplay.
Stories are made up of time, place, actions, and characters. I find most published board games have a decent grasp of time, place, and action but get hazy when it comes to character. Characters should be used to help illuminate why certain actions are being taken and how those actions relate to the central dramatic question. Again, as we saw in the scene work post, knowing your character's motivation in the form of knowing their goals helps the player understand why they are doing what they are doing. All of the players can be playing the same unnamed units, with the same powers, but they should still know what those units are and why they take the actions they take. Pillars of the Earth is an excellent example of unnamed workers who have clear motivation and logic behind the actions they take. That game tells a story, even though the players are not playing a named protagonist. It should be noted that Pillars of the Earth still abstracts the actions of the 'master builders'. Board games, like theatre, will always require suspension of disbelief. As long as the internal logic is sound, abstraction for the benefit of mechanics is not only okay, but required.
I have mentioned the central dramatic question a couple of times. Also called the super-objective or the dramatic spine, this question is the core to the theme of a narrative. A dramatic question can be posed as a question that gameplay is seeking to answer, such as "Who is the best merchant in the Mediterranean?" or "Can my team stop the apocalypse before time runs out?" Theme should be more specific than genre though. A contest to see who is the best merchant is a theme, whereas trading in the Mediterranean is a genre. Theme is also closely aligned with mood (see previous post about image research). Your theme, mood, and narrative should be closely entwined. To check if they are, see if the following statement is true about your game: "The theme is X because the narrative is Y which creates a mood of Z." The more 'because' statements you can come up with, the more connected your theme and mood and narrative. This is easier to achieve if your main theme is present throughout your game. When a theme is deeply connected to a game, certain mechanisms will be rejected because they adversely affect the mood or narrative of a game. Befriending the eldritch horror or murdering the other merchant competitors may stem from fun and interesting game mechanics but don't advance the central narrative of your game. Of course, you could change the narrative. However, in my experience, once you have built the internal logic of your game world you will find it difficult to change any element that goes against the spirit (or ethics) of your game. This is doubly true if you are invested in the theme. Wingspan was only ever going to be a game about birds, because of Elizabeth Hargrave's integration and investment in the theme. This is perhaps not the literary definition of theme, and as board game design progresses we are seeing more 'higher meaning' behind the themes of games, but I believe that starting with theme integration naturally leads to deeper, universal themes. The more you think about your underlying narrative, the more theme you can get back out of it.
This is a lot of terms to consider, but I believe you can boil it down to some simple questions to answer when analyzing your design:
-Do the locations make sense and connect to the overall design?
-Can the rules be explained in the context of the narrative?
-Does the tension of gameplay line up with the dramatic tension of the narrative?
-Do the players know who they are playing and why that matters?
-Does the purported theme of the game mesh well with the narrative that plays out? With the mood?
I firmly believe that having a theme in a design means having a story. Theme is story; art is story. Narrative-driven games require that more effort be put into their stories, but every themed game should have consideration for its story. Anything less is merely an abstract game with art.
For this post, I relied heavily on Stage Lighting: Fundamentals and Applications, by Richard Dunham, found here, as my scenic design teacher didn't teach from a text book.
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