"How did you meeples meet?": Relationships in Board Game Design

Humans are social creatures. Relationships of all types, good and bad, are essential to the human experience. One of the chapters in Backwards and Forwards caught my attention by the lack of representation in board games: “Customs, styles, politics, laws, tastes, and almost everything else change from age to age, period to period. But something we know intimately changes little: relationships among family members.” (David Ball, Backwards and Forwards, p. 85)

Family relationships are rarely present in board games. Family connections can be found in quite a few games, but the dynamics of relationships are not explored. Frequently, families are used as a twist on resource management, like in Agricola. Historical games may use women as a form of currency. Most often though, family connections are merely flavor text. Gloom is merely a set of odd characters having a bad time. 

Friendships are also largely absent from board games. Instead, players are likely to be asked to join factions or create a political or strategic alliance. These relationships are transactional, lacking the narrative implication of an emotional connection. 

Players are usually asked to see their characters in terms of what occupational role they fill, which is usually connected to the mechanics of play. Even social deduction games follow this axiom; any relationship leveraging occurs in meta-play. Games are seen primarily as systems still, which prioritizes systemic-style content like military and political organization. 

Relationships are perhaps seen as the purview of TTRPGs, which have time to develop nuanced characters and narratives. What would relationships add to board games?

Relationships are something all humans understand. Including relationships adds a level of context that short cuts the route to emotional engagement. Compare the dramatic difference between two rival leaders going to war and two brothers raising armies to fight for control of a kingdom. Simple relational details can propel a theme from overdone to compelling. 

Relationships give verisimilitude. Regardless of how fantastic your world-setting is, relationships will make the world feel lived-in. Players may not understand the hierarchy of different classes of character, but will instantly understand the dynamic between older and younger brothers. 

Relationships can be leveraged for interesting mechanics. Board game design has not seen a lot of this. I think friendship mechanics would look different from alliances. Perhaps instead of a restriction on when and how alliances take place, friendships could be with any other player but require another sort of strategic compromise, like trading the actions available to each friend on a given turn. Betrayal in a friendship context has the possibility to add drama over breaking an alliance. 

Relationships do not have to be positive. Revenge and betrayal are much stronger when 'it's personal.' 

Ask yourself, who are the characters in my game world? How are they related to each other? How do they feel about those relationships? How can I leverage those relationships for more compelling social dynamics between my players? 

Phew, I made it through the whole post without once mentioning Fog of Love. I should probably play that at some point. 

Connecting Actions and Narrative: A Look at "Backwards and Forwards"

I recently read a book that's been on my shelf for a long time. Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball is a step by step approach to script analysis. As I've stated before, script analysis is a useful tool when looking at board game design. Crafting a good story is important not just in the lore of a game, but also within the emergent narrative of gameplay itself. Today, I'm summarizing some of the main points in Backwards and Forwards and applying them to board game design. Quotes in italics are excerpts from the book.

On Actions
"Action occurs when something happens that makes or permits something else to happen." (p.9)
Backwards and Forwards begins with an analysis of what constitutes an action. Actions are caused by triggers (the first event) and result in heaps (the second event; the result of the action). An action requires two events in order to be an action: a cause and a result. In board games, we can use this definition to cover game actions and narrative actions. Mechanically, each action has to have a reason to occur (the trigger) and an effect (the heap). Players should feel that the mechanics are connected and do not simply occur unconnected from the rest of gameplay. Narratively, actions should feel motivated by the story. Players should understand why two characters are trying to kill each other (the trigger) and what the result will be if one succeeds (the heap).

"Each trigger leads to a new heap. (Each event causes or permits a second event.) ...But now the heap, the second event, becomes a trigger: a new first event of a new action." (p.12)
Each action must make sense and progress to future actions. Players should be able to see a clear line of their choices during gameplay that leads to their success or failure. In themed games, mechanics must progress the story as well as the game. A mechanism might work well but still feel out of place due to the theme.

"Only when we look at events in reverse order can we see, with certainty, how the dominoes fell, which fell against which." (p.15)
Once there is an end to your game, narratively or mechanically, work backwards to ensure every action serves that end. This prevents parts of the game not directly connected to the win condition from proliferating. Additionally, you can avoid having the early parts of gameplay feel rote or unnecessary by working backwards through your game and stopping where the actions stop being meaningful.

On Narrative 
"First the playwright presents the world in stasis....And for a play to begin, there must be an intrusion....Stasis comes about at the close of the play when the major forces of the play either get what they want or are forced to stop trying." (pp.19, 20, 21)
Each action has a cause, a reason for that action to be taken. Which means the first action in a game must have a reason for occurring. The story must have a reason to begin. Any lore before the game starts must make sense within the context of the beginning of gameplay. If the lore feels unrelated to the beginning stage of gameplay, players will not understand why they are playing. Ideally, exposition should describe the state of the world just before the first action in a game. Similarly, a game's ending should make sense. Victory points are fine, as long as there is a reason the game ended when it did (such as a time track, etc). Ideally, the intrusion that starts the narrative rolling should be related to when and how the story ends. Note: if the lore of what happens before or after the game sounds more fun that the actual gameplay, players will feel cheated. The most interesting parts of the story should occur during gameplay. Otherwise, you are including a companion short story/novel not lore related to the game.

"Dramatic conflict...is the force that drives the play from action to action." (p. 31)
"[A] play's conflict is between what someone wants and what hinders the want: the obstacle." (p. 28)
Any game with a goal and an obstacle has conflict. This is different from violence or aggression. If a game causes players to overcome obstacles, even if it is non-competitive/non-scoring, it has conflict.

There are four types of conflict:
"1. Me against myself.  2. Me against other individuals. 3. Me against society. 4. Me against fate, or the universe, or natural forces, or God or the gods." (pp. 30, 31)
Conflict in games looks like player vs. player, one vs. all, player(s) vs. game, etc. Other types of conflict could include players vs. time, or even players vs. having to be creative under pressure. Make sure that the conflict present in your game is the conflict you intended. Do this by examining the goals and obstacles in your game. There will be many different types of conflict, varying by the variety of mechanical and thematic actions in the game. Some of the types of conflict present may not feel right in the overall context of the game. By examining your conflicts, you can identify which are outside the intended experience of the game. 

"A forward is anything that arouses an audience's interest in things yet to come." (p. 45)
"A forward is any of a myriad of devices, techniques, tricks, maneuvers, manipulations, appetizers, tantalizers, teasers, that make an audience eager for what's coming up." (p. 46)
"Sometimes the promise of the forward is not fulfilled.... [T]he effect of the forward is the same: the audience has been maneuvered into paying close attention." (p. 57)
Any action, event, phase, or resource not available at the beginning of the game should be used to increase player engagement by keeping them excited for what's to come. Space Base's multi-tier market is a great example of this. Players can see expensive items long before they can buy them. These elements can help build tension through to the end of the game. A good game should tell an interesting story (even if it's an abstract game). 

"Not only do forwards keep us interested, but forwards focus attention where the playwright wants it." (p. 47)
By holding some things back, designers can redirect the attention of the players to certain strategies or narrative events. Timing is important not just from a balance standpoint but from an emergent narrative one. 

"[C]haracter in drama is revealed in one way: action, that which a person does—deeds." (p. 60)
"Action results from what a character does to get what he or she wants (motivation) in spite of obstacles." (p. 62)
"Description must be validated by examination of action." (p. 63)
I don't care how much you insist on a particular narrative in your lore, if it's not born out in gameplay it's not the actual story of your game. For instance, I am a big fan of Scorpius Freighter. The lore states that the players are smugglers. The game plays like 'trading in the Mediterranean in space.' The 'bribes' could easily be taxes. Other than flavor text, no part of the gameplay indicates that what you are doing is illegal. Perhaps the smuggler theme is more desirable from a marketing standpoint, but from an artistic view, it feels pasted-on. Honestly, most games are guilty of this on some level. In which case, any game that bucks the trend and matches a lore description to gameplay experience will automatically be ahead of the curve. 

Honestly, there's more I could go into, but that's enough for this post. Check out the book if any of this intrigues you. 

Backwards and Forward by David Ball is available here.

A defense of mid-weight games with non-gamer themes

The success of Wingspan has led to discussion of how a heavier game can serve as a gateway game under the right circumstances. For many gamers, Wingspan falls short on strategic depth. For other, Wingspan is too heavy to play with their families. In spite of these concerns, Wingspan is wildly popular with both gamers and non-gamers.

There is an idea that games need to be simple (i.e. light weight) in order to be gateway games. This is in spite of the fact that most everyone grew up learning Monopoly, which would not qualify as a gateway game if it were published this century. The reasoning around gateway games is that simple games lower the barrier for entry. But what we should notice about Wingspan's popularity is that complex rules are not necessarily a barrier for entry if players are motivated to learn the game.

Traditional gateway games will always be an important part of the hobby. However, heavier games can also be ambassadors for the hobby. People will take the extra effort to learn heavier games if they feel sufficiently motivated. Which means the game must be appealing apart from the rules and mechanics. Gateway games lower the barrier for entry by being quick and easy to learn, so that players get to the fun faster. Mid-weight games can lower the barrier to entry by making everything else so fun that learning the mechanics becomes less of a chore. The physical elements of the game should pull people in, making them want to pick up and examine components. Themes should be approachable and engaging. Frequently, non-gamers are also non-nerds, so modern themes or themes that are less 'genre' based will bring in people who are turned off by dungeon crawlers or space games. Art should be (respectfully) race and gender inclusive and when depicting humans. As much as possible, theme should be integrated with mechanics, so players know why they are taking actions. Rulebooks should be clear and avoid using gamer language.

Again, people will learn games they are sufficiently motivated to learn. That means looking at how games can appeal to non-gamers and implement those elements into games. Mass appeal does not have to mean mass market. If hobby games are ever going to be able to move away from the razor thin margins of profit, mass appeal needs to be a consideration. The success of Wingspan shows that we do not have to sacrifice complexity to achieve that level of appeal.