Resonance in Board Games

What makes board game themes resonate with players? 

Resonance is a quality of sound signified by the depth and reverberation of tone. In music, resonance is created by the shape and clarity of the tone, not just the volume. How do designers get their themes to reverberate across the hobby? By adding depth, shape, and clarity to their themes. 

The opposite of resonance is muddiness. Themes that lack clarity can create confusion, both of rules and narrative. While games should create puzzlement, they should not create confusion. By examining our themes in detail, we can clearly express what the intended game experience is supposed to be. 

Common qualities of resonant games are 1) theme and mechanics that align, 2) use of theme to explain the why of game play, 3) themes that are relatable to players on an emotional level, and 4) themes that fill a void in the market. I’m going to focus on the two middle qualities: using theme to explain 'why' and relating to players on an emotional level. Aligning theme and mechanics will be discussed as part of that, but I won’t be looking in depth at specific mechanics in this post. Also, I think if a theme resonates it will naturally seem to fill a void in the market, so you shouldn’t put the cart before the horse: work on your theme first, and the market will sort itself out. 

I have developed a short list of tools to tweak themes to help them resonate better by making them more relatable to players and by adjusting mechanics to make the rules and mechanisms more relatable to the theme. These tools are not the only ways to achieve resonance, but I think they are a good place to start. 

But first, I am going to pivot and discuss theatre for a bit. In 1570, literary critic Lodovico Castelvetro codified the three neoclassical unities of theatre: unity of action, unity of time, and unity of place. In sixteenth century Italy, this meant a play must have a single plot, one location, and take place in a 24 hour period. The idea was that the audience needed a clear grounding in the events of a play in order to follow what was happening. Theatre has largely moved away from this stringent formulation, but this is a good starting place for looking at game themes. I have borrowed the unities for my list of tools for resonance and added one more. My list of tools for building resonant theming is plot, location, time, and character. 

Note: You don’t need all of the things I’m going to suggest. Many times you may find you only need one or two to give your design the spark it needs to hook players. Also, this won’t be a comprehensive list of how to use these tools, just some broad ideas that should make the tools easier to remember. 

Let’s start with plot. The most impactful design choice you can make is to have the game objective and narrative or theme align. How you win the game should feel similar to how a character succeeds in the narrative. For example, in Sheriff of Nottingham the characters goals of making money at the market are closely aligned to the players goals of making the most points because most of the points are analogous to money the character has made. 

Game actions should help further the narrative arc, not just game objectives. This means that the actions players take should not just be thematic, they should feel important to the story. Every location in Tokaido makes sense to the narrative; none of them are naked mechanics poking through. A game like Space Base, on the other hand, is almost all naked mechanics with a lightly thematic setting. Space Base's mechanics may be better than Tokaido's, but the game isn't as emotionally resonant. 

Another way to add resonance through plot is to ground your story in a ‘universal’ experience. People like what they can relate to. This experience should provide the emotional impetus of the game, but you can layer whimsy on top of it. The movie My Neighbor Totoro is an excellent example of a whimsical setting that is still deeply grounded in the emotional reality of the real world. Adding depth to themes means adding layers of meaning and subtext, not simply a more detailed world. Ideas like friendship, sacrifice, and revenge add resonance. Made-up words and endless fantasy creatures do not. 

One way to avoid muddiness is by clearly indicating the location of the game-narrative. Stories are more accessible if listeners know ‘where’ events are taking place. This can be done through game board illustration, character movement, and game ‘physics’. Illustrations help remind players of the scene ‘around’ them. Character movement helps reinforce distances and topography. Tokaido gives the impression of a journey because the characters are moving across the board even though the 'map' is abstract. Game mechanics that incorporate physics like gravity help make the game feel more real, such as in Walking in Burano. Even components can provide a sense of location like the conveyor belts in Sushi Roll. It’s important to note that you don’t need a ton of detail to achieve the desired effect. A few details added very intentionally was all the aforementioned games needed to create a greater sense of location.

Another way to orient players within your game is to provide a sense of the timescale of the narrative (i.e. epochs, real time, seasons, etc.). Advancement of gameplay should align with the timescale you are using. Be aware that different scales produce different experiences. For example, a condensed time frame makes the action more immediate which adds excitement to a game. Civilization games lack that sense of immediacy. Does the game take place in one day? Does a round? A turn? Would adding what time of year a game occurs change your game in a meaningful way? One thing that made Viticulture stand out when it was published was how it used seasons to give a rhythm to the mechanics.

One of the best ways to tap into players' emotions is through character. Character goals should align with game objectives. Special powers should signal what a character desires or their strengths/weaknesses. Characters with narrative motivated goals and obstacles that are provided by game mechanics will seem more like real people. 

Individuals make more sympathetic characters/avatars than entities or corporations or factions. Games like Terraforming Mars don't interest me on a thematic level because players play as corporations. However, games with unrelated individuals are less resonant than games that give characters relationships. Relationships add depth and drive home meaning. I have already written about this, though so I won't dwell on it here.  

My favorite game that uses all four tools to great effect is the video game Untitled Goose Game. However, I believe that Tokaido is underserved in the hobby community when it is judged solely by its mechanics. Tokaido uses each of the tools I listed and creates a very resonant game that is very accessible to new gamers. Would a better game do everything Tokaido does well but also have more variety in gameplay? Sure. But if you want a single game to study how to add resonance without a Gloomhaven sized box, that game is Tokaido. Look at the theme: you play a person (character) traveling (plot) across Japan (location) for vacation (time). Helpfully, condensing the tools for resonance into a one sentence description is a good formulation for a hook. 

Resonant games have depth of theme, clarity of narrative, and a strong shape of mechanics that provide scaffolding for the theme. Plot, location, time, and character are tools you can use to create that depth, clarity, and shape.