Creating Emotions in Players

I've been reading Emotional Design by Don Norman. This book is half a philosophical discussion of product design and half speculation about future technology. But the parts I found the most useful were the descriptions of how emotions result from and guide a user's interaction with a product. In this post, I am distilling out those emotional chain reactions (my term) and applying them to board game design. [NB: I'm not an expert on emotion and this information is not meant to be used outside of game design.] 

There are two main chains of emotions described in the book (although not as explicitly as I have depicted them here): the anxiety chain and the happiness chain (again, my own terms). The anxiety chain starts either with frustration or confusion.  Frustration can result from struggling to learn or to execute actions or from a sense of danger (such as the danger of losing). This type of frustration can be used to build tension in a gameplay arc. Frustration can also result from feeling a lack of control. Feeling a lack of control can lead to a lack of trust in the design. Frustration can lead to anxiety. Confusion should be avoided in game design, but will lead to a similar state of anxiety as frustration does. Anxiety causes increased concentration on the details of a problem. Anxiety produces focus. Focus is useful in heavy strategy games. High levels of anxiety can produce the desire for escape. These sensations can create fear. Fear, if overcome (or if the threat is overcome), produces pride and a sense of achievement. Players also feel pride in overcoming obstacles and refining their strategy. However, high anxiety coupled with lack of control will lead to anger. 

Notice that this chain of emotions is fairly linear, which mirrors the style of thinking created by this chain, which is marked by intense focus. Emotions in parentheses are the undesired emotions that can occur at the same point in the chain as more desirable emotions. I have extrapolated that struggle and danger are created by challenges and threats, which I include on my model. Also, this is more a look at how emotions progress and less how to create each emotion in the chain. I'll be writing more about creating emotion in future posts. 

There are some important things to note about anxiety chains. Too much frustration will drive away players. On the other hand, shared experience of these "negative" emotions can lead to increased social bonding—a positive outcome. Players in a state of anxiety will be less open to interruptions, as such prevent the concentration created by their anxiety. Humans are less able to learn while in a state of anxiety. Any new rules must be presented clearly and be easily referred back to. Anxiety chains seem best suited to intellect-challenging designs or horror-themed games.

Emotional Design helpfully includes a list of things that can produce feelings that belong in the anxiety chain: heights; sudden, unexpected loud sounds or bright lights; looming objects; extreme hot or cold; darkness; empty, flat terrain; crowded, dense terrain; crowds of people; rotting smells; decaying foods; bitter tastes; sharp objects; harsh, abrupt sounds; grating, discordant sounds; misshapen human bodies; snakes and spiders; bodily fluids and vomit. I don't think these are needed to produce tension in a euro game, but in horror games they fit right in. You could also use only one or two elements—a few sharp objects in an eerily empty terrain, for instance—to shift the tone of a location to a tenser, more anxious feel. 

The happiness chain starts with some combination of attraction, fun, and/or pleasure. Attraction is our response to aesthetics, in this case specifically non-utilitarian pleasure. (Much of aesthetics, fun, and pleasure overlap, so I attempted to emphasize the least overlapping, most relevant aspects.) Of the eight types of fun, I feel that fantasy, narrative, discovery, and expression best fit as a description of "fun" within the happiness chain (again, due to overlap). However, the only type of fun I would leave out of the chain is challenge, as it clearly belongs on the anxiety chain. Don Norman cites Patrick Jordan's study, Designing Pleasurable Products, to explain the four types of pleasure. Of those four, two are useful here: physio-pleasure and socio-pleasure. Simply put, pleasure arises from our physical senses and our social interactions. Clearly, these two elements could be lumped into "fun," but I will leave fun and pleasure separate as Mr. Norman did. Attraction, fun, and pleasure lead to positive feelings of enjoyment, which he terms happiness. Players in such a positive state will be more inclined to curiosity and creativity. Problem solving and learning are also more likely outcomes. Positive emotions such as in happiness chains produce better conditions for brain storming than negative emotions. 

The happiness chain is not very linear. It resembles a method of brain-storming, which is fitting since the style of thinking promoted by this chain is well suited to brain-storming. 

Happiness chains allow players to be more open to interruptions and more receptive to new ideas. However, happiness chains produce less concentration and focus as a result. Happiness chains are well suited for party games, games with high randomness, and games that require a certain amount of flexible thinking during gameplay. 

Dan Norman also supplies us with a list of things that produce the positive emotions found in the happiness chain: warm, comfortably lit places; temperate climate; sweet tastes and smells; bright, highly saturated hues; soothing sounds; simple melodies and rhythms; harmonious music and sounds; caresses; smiling faces; rhythmic beats; 'attractive' people; symmetrical objects; rounded, smooth objects; 'sensuous' feelings, sounds, and shapes. Kids' and family games tend to showcase art emblematic of this list. These images produce feelings of peace and safety. You probably don't want to visually design your combat game around this list, although Root made a high-conflict, high-strategy game more approachable by using friendly looking art. Just be aware of what emotions your design choices will create. 

In addition to the two main chains, Emotional Design mentions how to create other emotions or what those emotions in turn inspire. Joy (a subset of happiness, presumably) creates an urge to play. Interest (perhaps another term for curiosity) creates a desire to explore. Hope is created by the expectation of a positive result. (Anxiety can also be characterized by the expectation of a negative outcome.) Relief occurs when an expected negative outcome doesn't happen. Disappointment results from an expected positive outcome not occurring. Remorse occurs when you perceive a negative outcome as your fault. Reproach occurs when a negative outcome is perceived as someone else's fault. Gratification is the result of a positive outcome that you are responsible for. Admiration results when a positive outcome occurs because of someone else. Surprise occurs when a situation does not unfold as anticipated and results in the need to reassess plans. Trust requires reliance, confidence, and integrity. Trust is required for cooperation. Embarrassment reflects your individual sense of appropriateness of behavior. 

Hopefully, this breakdown provides useful tools for designing emotions (intentionally) into games as well as diagnosing why some emotions feel out of place in certain games. The anxiety chain can additionally be used to figure out why playtesters are frustrated at various times while playing a prototype. Understanding the 'logic' behind emotions is a powerful tool in a designer's toolbox. 

Everything a Game Does

Here's something a little different. At GDC (online) this year, I watched a presentation on research surrounding app assisted games by Dr. Melissa Rogerson of the University of Melbourne. The research focused on categorizing how apps are/can be used in tabletop games. The unintended consequence (in my opinion) is that the list also doubles for many of the ways a game can require upkeep outside of player-driven actions. This makes sense because the main reason to have an app is to automate those elements of a game. 

The researchers identified eight functions used in apps: timing, randomizing, housekeeping, remembering, calculating, storytelling, teaching, and informing. Timing refers to actually tracking time. Randomizing is what it sounds like. Housekeeping includes game AI/automa upkeep. Remembering involves tracking progress, high scores, and unlocking new content. Calculating does all the mathy stuff like scoring. Storytelling is where all the lore/dialogue/flavor text is found. Teaching provides answers to rules questions or presents examples. Informing includes stuff not in the other categories like providing gates to hidden information. 

When using an app, all of these functions are (ideally) presented in a streamlined, optimized way. The existence of apps makes players less forgiving of analog upkeep. After all, apps remove the necessity for components like sand timers. So, is the solution to always go with an app? I would argue that apps and their functions are pointing us toward areas of analog design where we need more innovation, elegant solutions, and general creativity. 

This list also points us to the pain points of many games: the parts that feel like work. That's why these elements get moved to an app. For those of us designing app-less games, it's up to us to keep the work load low and the fun quotient high. I plan to use this list as a diagnostic for my games: How clunky is the calculation? How fiddly is the housekeeping? How effective are the informing elements? 

Short post today, especially given the title. And I probably misrepresented one or more of the functions to a degree, my apologies. However, I thought this was a useful list, and maybe you will too. 

Limitations in Art

I swear I won't transition this blog to be about the philosophy of artistic creation. I promise. However, understanding what art is and how people create art is foundational to my perspective on board game design. Today's post is a continuation of my series about art. In those posts, I outlined the ideas that design is art, art and craft are inextricably entwined, and that making art does not have to be a solo creative event. 

This post is about limitations. All art is created within constraints. I'm tired of seeing posts in design fora about how "designers shouldn't be limited in what they can design." This concept is nonsensical. Design in particular is more about constraints than other artistic fields, because design places a higher emphasis on usability. So let's take a look at some possible constraints and how they interact with various forms of art. 

Let's start with physics. Gravity is possibly the biggest limitation in the art world. I know this sounds like a joke, but it's not. Making sure performance spaces are structurally sound and safe is a huge part of technical theatre. I have been party to many conversations between designers or directors and technical directors that revolved around what was designed on paper versus what is physically possible. And since gravity is responsible for weight, it is also the cause of transportation costs and restrictions. Gravity, safety, durability— physics dictates a lot in the art world. Good designers design with physics in mind. 

Art is also limited by human physiology. A singer has to breathe. There are only so many tones audible to the human ear. An architect must design stairs and doors to human scale, both for usability and safety.  Board games have to be easily manipulated by the average human user. Human physiology dictates usability. 

Usability is about how function dictates form. The artistic medium also dictates form. Structurally sound materials will always behave and look a certain way. A block of marble contains different limitations than a canvas. Oil paints and acrylic paints produce very different paintings. Chip board tokens have different design constraints than poker chips. The materials we use when making art are themselves a limitation. 

Cost may be the second biggest limiting factor after gravity. (Although, as discussed, a lot of cost exists because of gravity.) Not every movie has Avatar's budget. A concert hall built with perfect acoustics costs more than installing a sound system. Manufacturing in China is more affordable than building the printers needed to manufacture board games in the US. The art we make is limited by what we can afford.  

Cost also affects audience. Mass produced art may cost more in total, but the per unit cost is much lower than handmade art. Movies will always be more widely available and accessible than plays. Video games will likely always have a greater market share than board games. (In terms of games, we have to factor not just per unit cost, but also the cost per hour of average playtime to understand consumer motivations for purchasing.) The higher the per unit cost, the smaller the audience. 

Cost to consumers is just one aspect of marketability. How marketable a piece of art is will limit it's audience size and it's longevity. And marketing is just one aspect of cultural mores. What and how something is marketed reflects what we value as a culture or society.  I had a theatre history professor tell my class about how avant garde theatre in the 1970s experimented with performers having sex on stage. Not as a part of a larger show, either. Perhaps you could argue these performances were pushing boundaries within the art world. But it turns out that real sex on stage is awkward and somewhat boring for an audience. These types of performances quickly died out. Today, our cultural values dictate that simulated sex scenes have intimacy choreographers and other safety measures in place to prevent abuse of or by performers. Culture limits what art succeeds and what fails.

Cultural values inform the types of stories we tell— which stories are in good taste and which are in poor taste. These values do shift overtime. Baywatch would have been banned in the early 20th century. However, no individual artist has the power to shift cultural values very far one way or the other by creating something that falls outside of what is currently acceptable. Art gets greater mileage by instead critiquing the existing cultural values. This requires that artists be engaged in a conversation about cultural values thru their art. Whether a piece of art is celebrating the current cultural values or critiquing them, art is always a reflection of the culture. 

And since creating art is one side of a conversation, artists also have to be prepared for criticism. Criticism doesn't limit art so much as it explores how a piece of art intersects with cultural mores. Critics are an informed proxy for the audience. (You can win a Pulitzer Prize in criticism.) All mature art fields have critical analysis in the form of journalists, academics, and popular trend setters. Criticism is an inevitable by-product of making art. 

All art has limitations. You could go so far as to say that art is the creative decisions we make within our limitations. 

Creating Resonance: Part 4, GDC '21

I was honored to participate in the Board Game Summit for the all virtual GDC this year. My talk was pre-recorded and aired for participants on Monday, July 19th. This is Part 4 of the script for my GDC 2021 talk: Creating Resonance with Thematic Design. (Part 1 is available here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.) The script has been lightly edited for ease of reading and annotated with links to other posts for additional thoughts on certain topics. 

Now I’d like to look at two games as case studies for how they implement the traits I’ve outlined. The first is Tokaido. Let’s start with the rules lore, to see what the game says about itself: 

    “The players are travelers in Japan in the days of old. They will follow the prestigious Tokaido [road] and try to make this journey as rich an experience as possible. To do this, they will pass through magnificent countrysides, taste delicious culinary specialties, purchase souvenirs, benefit from the virtues of hot springs, and have unforgettable encounters.” [Tokaido rulebook, p.2] 

Or as most gamers have described the game: you’re competing to have the best vacation. I like the brevity here. There’s additional historical information at the end of the rulebook, but this introduction only tells you what you need to know to get into the game. It’s not amazing writing, but it gets the job done.

The board itself is fairly abstract, but we still clearly see a road stretching across it, with wayside points to stop at. In this case, the suggestion of a road is just as effective as a more realistic illustration. After all, the character movement reinforces the idea of a road, as does the elongated board shape. Without these signifiers, however, the abstract representation would not have been very effective. 

Tokaido is a masterclass in evocative actions. Let’s look at the action names in the game: first, a player moves a traveller and lands on a space. I’d prefer if the player ‘travelled to a location’ and ‘visited’ or ‘stopped’ there, but we can’t have everything. However, each of the spaces is evocative in a way that aids rules comprehension. Shops sell souvenirs, temples accept donations, encounters reveal people, and inns provide meals. Ending a round or ‘day’ with essentially dinner is particularly evocative. The remaining locations require a small amount of imagination but we can assume that farms produce money because you spend time there as a day laborer, panoramic views appear to produce panoramic artwork (the location and the cards are just called panoramas, which is a touch confusing), and hot springs presumably produce relaxation. 

Nowhere on the board is there a generic board game symbol to draw a card. The thematic graphic design is effective at reinforcing the rules while also helping reduce the abstraction of the board, particularly the road. Tokaido deftly uses time and location elements to create the feel of gameplay without needing full-bleed art on the game board. This is good news for designers— you can create rich experiences in prototypes even if you are not an artist. 

The cards do have generic game graphics in the form of scoring tables and transformation arrows. However, the larger art of the cards (as opposed to the locations) offsets the necessity of [displaying] this information. There is a balance struck between thematic expression and usability.

We find plenty of familiarity in shopping, sightseeing, and stopping at an inn for the night. The unexpectedness of Tokaido came from the clean visual design of the board coupled with the thematic gameplay. That same clean design keeps the game feeling uncluttered, a rare feat in a point salad style game. It’s also still unexpected, almost a decade later.

For the next case study, I’ll be looking at a much more detail-filled game: Everdell. Once again, let’s start with the lore in the rulebook: 

    “A new year begins. Within the charming valley of Everdell, beneath the boughs of towering trees, among meandering streams and mossy hollows, a civilization of forest critters is thriving and expanding. Ever since famed adventurer Corrin Evertail discovered the hidden realm long ago, the citizens have prospered under the shelter of the Ever Tree. From Everfrost to Bellsong, many a year have come and gone, but the time has come for new territories to be settled and new cities established. You will be the leader of a group of critters intent on just such a task. There are buildings to construct, lively characters to meet, events to host- it will be a busy year! Will the sun shine brightest on your city before the winter moon rises?” [Everdell rulebook, p. 1] 

It’s not great. There are too many details in general, but also too many details that exist only here and don’t appear in the game. This is a game with a lot of flavor text, both on the cards and in the rulebook, including a short story and a poem, but most of that text is very clearly “opt-in” lore. The beginning of a rulebook is a place most players don’t want to dwell on. Lengthy fluff like this with lots of adjectives and place names feel like a loss of momentum before the game has even begun. 

I would prefer something more like this: 

“A new year begins. Within the charming valley of Everdell a civilization of forest critters is thriving and expanding. But the time has come for new territories to be settled and new cities established. You will be the leader of a group of critters intent on just such a task. There are buildings to construct, lively characters to meet, events to host- it will be a busy year! Will the sun shine brightest on your city before the winter moon rises?” [an edit of the above paragraph]

The focus changes to what the players will be doing in the game and not the geography and history of the world. But don’t get me wrong, this is perhaps my biggest criticism of Everdell’s expression of theme and it’s one that is shared by many games. One lesson here is to read your lore fluff out loud to easily see if you’re giving the reader too much detail. 

The art of Everdell is highly evocative. Reminiscent of other works such as The Wind in the Willows or the Redwall series, the art immediately establishes the tone of the game— cozy but not completely free from conflict. 

The resources in Everdell are delightfully tactile. The berries, which are made of a squishy plastic, are a standout example of how materials used in components can create resonance. The rest of the resources are nearly as good. The resin is translucent plastic; the pebbles are opaque hard plastic; the twigs are made of wood. Tactility that matches our expectations provides a strong emotional response. Tactility can also be an avenue of unexpectedness. I’m not sure that I can name another game that uses the same kind of squishy plastic as the berries in Everdell. 

The building cards produce resources or effects that are highly thematic. Mines produce pebbles, farms produce berries, storehouses store resources. Buildings also attract critters whose profession matches that building. Postal pigeons move into post offices. Kings move into castles. Placing a closed door token on a building that has already attracted a critter is a simple and thematic reminder that that building is occupied. We get a sense of location from the materials used to build the buildings, from how the buildings are used, and from the critters that inhabit the buildings. Coupled with the game board, Everdell has a strong sense of place. One small element of dissonance is that positioning in your tableau has no game effect. I’m far from wanting Everdell to be more complicated, but I wish that neighboring buildings or critters had some slight mechanical relationship, rather than just being a random assortment in front of the player. 

While discussing location, we have to talk about the tree. The tree adds a sense of scale to the world relative to the wooden critter workers. It also adds unexpectedness through sheer verticality. It makes an attempt to be incorporated into the game board as a place to store components, which ultimately isn’t that useful, but I would rather it have some use rather than for it to be just a cardboard sculpture. The tree impairs usability somewhat by blocking lines of sight during gameplay and when storing it afterwards, however. I suppose the lesson here is that if you are going to include an element that is even slightly difficult to use, it had better be gorgeous and highly thematic to offset its potential downsides. 

Everdell is not the only game to divide rounds or phases into seasons, but it uses this structure pretty well to create a sense of time passing. Players can imagine harvests, births, and rests after long journeys during the prepare for season phase. My only complaint here is that the theming is so strong that it conflicts with the rules. One player can move into a new season while other players are still in the previous season, which is so counterintuitive that I got this rule wrong the first time I played Everdell. 

Everdell uses illustration, tactility, verticality, and timing to create a rich world while mostly not over cluttering this world with distracting details. 

These were just two examples of games that use a variety of tools to create resonance, particularly with regards to location and time. I hope to see more games in the future that leverage character motivation and relationships for resonance, especially in shorter games. Campaign and legacy games are already exploring more complex characterizations. And I hope that you leave today with a better sense of what it means for a game to be resonant. To recap, resonance is the combination of emotions and story elements with some attention-grabbing twists that focuses on the core experience and nothing else. Familiarity plus unexpectedness minus chaff. If you want to dig more into thematic design concepts, I have a blog at shippboardgames.blogspot.com which I update most Mondays. Thank you. 

This concludes my GDC talk. 

Creating Resonance: Part 3, GDC '21

I was honored to participate in the Board Game Summit for the all virtual GDC this year. My talk was pre-recorded and aired for participants on Monday, July 19th. This is Part 3 of the script for my GDC 2021 talk: Creating Resonance with Thematic Design. (Part 1 is available here. Part 2 is here. Part 4 is here.) The script has been lightly edited for ease of reading and annotated with links to other posts for additional thoughts on certain topics. 

Familiarity isn’t enough to make a game stand out. Unexpectedness adds spice to familiarity. Unexpected elements grab attention and generate interest through breaks in a pattern. However, this requires that you establish a pattern before you disrupt it. If everything is unexpected then nothing is. 

Unexpectedness can occur thematically as 'whimsy' or fantastical elements that depart from reality, as reversals or flipped tropes, as uniqueness and innovation, or as high production values. But again, once everyone has games with miniatures or the latest hotness, that ceases to be a draw for any particular game. The trick to adding unexpected elements is to keep them unexpected. 

I explain whimsy as the defining aesthetic of a Miyazaki film. In design language, fantasy means images and themes that depict things that could never exist in reality— more along the lines of the flying whales from Fantasia 2000 and less medieval wizards. Whimsy is inclusion of fantasy elements with a lighter touch. This is where Four Gardens fits thematically for me— a 3D, rotating tower of resources is whimsical and creates the unexpectedness needed for resonance. 

Reversals take familiar storylines and flip the script. This is an easy “unexpectedness hack” but not everything is made better by using a reversal. The story you tell still needs to feel motivated by the actions and needs to create the proper emotional responses in players. Trope subversion doesn’t have to be a complete reversal, however. Subverting expectations is a powerful storytelling method and resonance generator. Reversals or subversions can create feelings of imbalance in players that can draw them into a game emotionally because they no longer know exactly what to expect. 

While we’re talking about tropes, reversals are a good way to avoid stereotypes. However, regardless of whether an element is presented as true to type or as a subversion, we should take care to present our themes in a manner that is well thought out and respectful. I find that most harmful stereotypes appear in designs in which the designer simply didn’t care enough to put in the work to make the theme more vibrant and respectful. I hope one take away from this panel is that good themes don’t just happen; they take work. 

Innovation or other forms of uniqueness will always create excitement. But (similar to production values) there is a limit to how far uniqueness can take you. Innovation generally will lead to more critical acclaim than commercial appeal. And uniqueness is difficult to set as a design goal. While it’s great to stumble into genuine innovation, high quality iteration is easier to plan for and achieve. Also, by making a really resonant game, you can make a game that feels innovative even if every concept is a rehash of something else. 

A lot of games rely on production values to generate excitement. Previously, production values could be used as a type of uniqueness. I am a proponent of good looking, high quality games. But, as high production values become commonplace and expected, they will no longer be able to be relied upon to singlehandedly generate interest in a game. In other words, production values can still provide a hit of unexpectedness, but jury’s out on how much longer that will remain true. Also, as a designer, production values are typically outside of my control as I don’t plan to ever self-publish.

There are trends within the product design of board games to try to generate interest: miniatures, custom-shaped or screen-printed meeples, scenario books that replace boards, apps, etc. One that I find interesting is verticality, the implementation of components that make significant use of the y-axis. I find verticality interesting because some designs seem to be including it only to increase table presence and don’t connect it to gameplay. 

Speaking of table presence, let’s talk about gimmicks. Relying on big, splashy elements to grab attention quickly can feel gimmicky. Instead, ask interesting questions of your design. What component would most help drive home the theme? What would make players care more about the characters or story in the game? How can I subvert expectations? I particularly like trope-flipping because it requires a minimal amount of effort to achieve results. And theme-forward techniques like that don’t increase the cost of the game the way adding miniatures does. Asking questions of your design requires that you engage with your theme. Never, ever expect your audience to do imaginative work that you were unwilling to do. I don’t mean that you have to spell everything out for your players. I mean that you need to critically examine your theme to see where engagement or interest could be added. Engage your theme and interrogate it. You’ll be surprised where you end up.

When you know what your theme is- its emotions, plot, location, rhythm, characters and twist- cut everything else out. Do as little as possible to build the world beyond what is represented in the game. Figure out what the core of the theme is and get rid of everything else. Try to always leave your players wanting more. That feeling will drive engagement more readily than extensive world-building will. Feel free to write a novel about your world, but don’t put it in the game box. However, putting a limit on the amount of detail expressed by your theme is not a license to skimp on research. Really good research will inform which details are most necessary and evocative. 

    “The components ought to be so firmly compacted that if any one of them is shifted to another place, the whole is loosened up and dislocated; for an element whose addition or subtraction makes no perceptible difference is not really a part of the whole.” -Aristotle 

This is my favorite quote about board game design, even though it’s actually about theatrical design. Many people have said similar things throughout history, but not only did Aristotle say it first, he said it best. (Sidenote: the classical unities come from the neoclassical era, but they were an attempt to build on Aristotle’s rules for theatre. Theatre history has a lot of good advice for board game design.)

Good design is about removing clutter. Every detail of your game should reinforce the core theme. Just because a detail fits into the world doesn’t mean it belongs in the game. (If you really must add details, I do recommend using illustration as a way to convey details that doesn’t impede gameplay.) Including a detail just because it’s cool will feel gimmicky because it is a gimmick. 

I define a gimmick as anything that brings a sense of novelty and appeal but not much else. (If you are including an unnecessary element that you don’t think is cool, why are you doing that? Don’t do that.) A gimmick looks cool, but either isn't functional or impedes usability. A gimmick adds more cost than the value of what is received. Every element should feel necessary to the game experience; anything else is a distraction. Your core theme will create your core emotional experience. Adding extraneous elements dilutes that emotional experience. In other words, too much fluff makes your game less resonant.

But there is a compromise here. I like to think of flavor text and certain similar thematic details as “opt-in” details. Meaning a player can ignore these details if they choose. Flavor text is usually in a small font at the bottom of a card. I have the choice to read it or not. Components and even card art don’t give me the option to opt-out; they’re too prominent for my eyes to skip over. That’s the reason I get frustrated by the lore at the beginning of rulebooks: I can’t tell straight away if it contains important information about the game or not. If you want to include extra detail in your game that only provides flavor, it needs to be the kind of detail that players can choose to opt-in to or not. 

Removing chaff is also about finding the proportion between the familiar and the unexpected. Too much unexpectedness is jarring and will disconnect players from the theme. Too much familiarity only becomes a problem when the details stray from the core theme. So, generally speaking, leave unexpectedness to a few surprising twists compared to the rest of the game.

Part 4 explores how resonance has been implemented into 2 published games.