The Heaviest Mechanism

What is the heaviest mechanism? I'd say there are a few clear contenders that all share similar traits. But I'd like to point out one mechanism that while not the absolute heaviest in existence is far more difficult than it gets credit for. 

Most of the 'heaviness' of games comes from how mechanics fit together—either their resulting rules overhead or their emergent strategy, depending on which you qualify as being heavy. Individual mechanics are generally pretty light, unless they require multiplication or division. The heaviness of strategy games generally comes from spinning a lot of plates. 

Ideally, each mechanism in board game design could be 1) performed on one turn and 2) explained with one line of text. But some mechanisms need context to reveal themselves. So, "pickup resources" and "deliver resources" combine to become something more distinct as "pickup and deliver." And mechanics that reveal themselves thru context cannot usually be explained by a single line of text. I classify these mechanics as inherently heavier. 

For my money, the various multi-phase auction mechanics are probably the heaviest mechanics currently in the BGG database (but I'm not combing thru all of them or even all of the auctions to give a definite winner). They require the context of multiple players over multiple bids before they can be understood. This in turn requires a more in depth rules explanation. (They also require implicit understanding of the value of items and a certain amount of mental math and probability tracking to strategize well.) 

The mechanic I want to bring to your attention is nearly as difficult: multi-turn, multi-player context is required. It requires a paragraph of rules text. It has certain unintuitive conditions that trip up new players. It's pick-and-pass drafting. 

Pick-and-pass drafting (here on out, drafting) is a mechanic that has to be described in full, across an entire round and often into the following round before players have full context of what they are doing, let alone why. Just telling them to "take one card and pass the hand to the left" leaves out what you do with the card you take and whether you can swap that card for a future card. I'm blaming Spoons for making drafting so difficult to teach. (At least with American players above a certain age.) In Spoons, you keep a hand and pass a single card. There is only one hand that is yours. In drafting you can have your tableau, your hand, and the hand of cards you are passing. Players have to be taught explicitly what cards they own, what are locked in place, what gets passed, what can be discarded. And then they have to not get those categories confused. Which is difficult because it's all the same deck of cards. How many times have you played Sushi Go! only to have a player run out of cards before everyone else? For me, it's every time. 

To add to the rules complexity, most drafting games have additional rules around the direction of the draft. Whether it's left-right-left or a snake draft, these rules add complexity to an already complex system. Then you get the 2-player variants, which require you to understand the original rules so you can know what to do differently. I play a lot of games 2-player on the first play, so this standard of rules writing is maddening. Give me the whole turn structure in the variant section. 

Designers tend to think of drafting as a simple mechanic. Then they add it to games to increase complexity (e.g. Terraforming Mars). As someone who has designed a drafting game, how we are using the mechanic is more in line with what drafting really is: a complexity adder. In my experience, drafting is heavier than engine building. Both require knowledge of all of the cards and what they do, but drafting requires that knowledge to be given beforehand since the draft isn't open the way placing a card on the table is. This is why card glossaries are necessary. I can hand the rules to a player and tell them to look up the card in their hand, rather than having to explain out loud what the card does. Pool drafting is inherently lighter because the drafting is open on the table but also because it can be explained as a single action. (For what it's worth, "I cut; you chose" is heavier than drafting—because you are predicting other players' wants—but is often open information.) 

Engine building generally doesn't generate player interaction (expect maybe when you run your engine). Drafting requires consideration around not only what you are keeping but what you are giving away. Not only do you have to understand all of the cards, but also their values at given points in the game and what your neighbor may find valuable based on what they have played thus far. We've racked up a lot of spinning plates for a single mechanism. 

We often assume that everyone in the hobby has played a drafting game. I have playtested with a lot of designers who had never played a drafting game. I rarely had a playtest where I didn't have to teach "how to draft." Drafting is by far the heaviest mechanic in my game. Even if you aren't designing a drafting game, be aware of how context creates complexity. The longer something takes to explain the heavier it is. Some gamers may come to your game with context pre-installed, but you can't count on that. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.

A Close Look at Endowment Effect

I've been struggling with the endowment effect since around July 2018, but I didn't know what it was until a few months ago. Spoiler alert: I'm going to talk a lot about one of my designs in this post. 

Endowment effect is related to loss aversion. When you give a player something that is 'theirs' they will not want to give it up, even for something of greater value. You can deal with endowment effect in two ways: you can make it easier for players to progress by reducing the feeling of loss (by not taking their stuff or by not giving them stuff to begin with) OR you can ramp up the feeling of loss to create tension. Geoff Engelstein breaks these options down mechanically in Achievement Relocked. In his examples, the options above are presented to make a game feel more forgiving or less forgiving and that seems to correspond to lighter or heavier games. Which is a good starting place for understanding endowment effect. But I want to look at a third option: embracing endowment effect in lighter (or any) games as a way to drive home the theme. And I can really only do that by taking a close look at my upcoming game, Deadly Dowagers (signed and in development; not yet announced). 

Deadly Dowagers is a pick-and-pass drafting and tableau-building game for 2-6 players that plays in 45 minutes. Players take on the roles of Victorian women who would kill to marry a Duke. 

When I invite players to join a game of Deadly Dowagers, the ones who agree are typically excited at the prospect of the theme: Victorian women killing their husbands to marry richer ones (rinse and repeat). But once they start playing they seem to have a change of heart. Why can't they just get a divorce, they ask. Or, they will stay married long after they should have 'ended things' in order to win the game. The second and third (and so on) husbands are usually dispatched much more quickly. What makes the first husbands special? Well, for one they are the first, but, more importantly, the first husbands are 'purchased' as a part of set up. They are your starting gear. And unlike items in digital RPGs, you have to get rid of one before you can upgrade to the next one. That by itself creates some feelings. But then you layer on the cultural context of the theme. You are married to that portrait on that card. That is your husband. Players already wouldn't want to give up starting gear that they are still actively using. Starting husbands are that much more emotionally charged. 

I think at this point I need to make clear that this is a light, fun game. This moment of tension in the early game isn't there for every player and doesn't seem to ruin the experience (for people who are willing to play a game with this theme to begin with). Still, some designers would try to avoid that negative feeling in a light game. Not me. I wish that feeling happened with every husband in the game. However, as it stands, the fact that the first murder is the hardest feels metaphoric of a descent into a life of crime. The player psychology and rhythm of gameplay feed into and reinforce the theme. Which is always my goal in game design. 

So, if you wanted to leverage endowment effect for emotional effect, how should you go about it? First you must give the players (or let them choose from a selection) something of value. This needs to be the only task occurring. In Deadly Dowagers, players make two choices during set up: which portrait represents them and which husband they want to marry. (Husbands cost a certain amount of your starting money. It's a dowry system.) Later husbands are married while players are juggling tableaus of property, larger amounts of cash, and other players who are at a different phase of the game. (Play is mostly simultaneous.) I would have to slow the game down a lot to recreate the first husband feeling. 

Layering value deepens the emotional experience. Importantly, husbands are of mechanical value but also thematic value as mentioned above. Scarcity is another way to add perceived value, even if the item doesn't have the largest intrinsic value. Making players pay for the item adds another layer of value. (Creating loss around something of cultural value also creates the sense of violating a taboo. I'd be careful about making that the goal of the game, but it works in Deadly Dowagers.)

Once players have something of value, that item must be pitted against an opportunity loss. Husbands have special powers while they are alive, but leave you fortunes when they die. Do you need the power more or the money? If you run out of money, you may have a dead turn because you will be unable to build your tableau. This tension is what makes the negative feelings about loss worth it. 

If you really want to ramp up the feeling, make the loss permanent and have consequences. Obviously, death is permanent in Deadly Dowagers and creates an emotional response. But players also have to juggle the infamy of having buried their husbands under "mysterious" circumstances. To drive this home, not only is there an infamy track, but players place dead husbands in a personal husband graveyard that generates infamy for the rest of the game. The husband cards don't return to the 'market' but are left in the tableau as a momento mori. This system creates immediate and delayed consequences which is both thematic and adds tension. 

Make the loss player-driven. Every round in Deadly Dowagers has a husband phase during which players can get married to or murder a husband. Or they could pass. The decision to advance is on the players. Making the choice deepens the emotion. Forcing the loss thru a regular event feels scripted which decreases the tension. Forcing the loss thru a random event feels arbitrary and bad. If you give players an out by forcing the loss or avoiding the loss, they will take it to avoid mechanics that make them even slightly uncomfortable. On the other hand, you can give your players the hope of a way out. There is one single card in all of Deadly Dowagers that kills your husband by natural causes. Players feel better knowing there is a chance that they could avoid the decision that makes them feel bad, even though they would see that card at most twice in a game (you need to kill four husbands on average). 

Be aware of the goal gradient effect. Players' motivation to achieve a goal increases as players near the goal. What this means for Deadly Dowagers is that the closer players get to the end of the game, the more  murder-for-profit takes precedence over any other consideration. Again, this plays into the narrative arc of a descent into a life of crime. It also means that endowment effect would be even harder to implement past the halfway or two-thirds point in the game. "This thing is mine" becomes increasingly less important over time compared to "reaching the goal." 

I didn't have a language for any of this when I designed my game. I stumbled into a dynamic that worked the way I wanted it to and leaned into it. If I had known about endowment effect, I would have spent less time banging my head against a wall trying to make every husband feel valuable and would have embraced the arc present in the game sooner. You don't need to know every design term to design a good game, but knowing why something works the way it does can prevent you from wandering down too many rabbit trails during the design process. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays. 

Tools to Create Emotions

For this post, I'm combining some thoughts from Emotional Design, Achievement Relocked, these videos by Cogito Design, and my thoughts on resonance. 

I'm developing a list of tools and resources for ways to create emotions in players. I've divided the list into three sections: rhythm, transportation, and loss aversion. My thoughts on this subject are still evolving, so my categories may shift in the future. 

Rhythm sets the mood of a game. Rhythm is the feeling of a game's mechanics during play across the whole game. Turn structure, when a strategy pays off, the amount of randomness, etc. all impact the flow of a game. Setting the mood through mechanical flow primes players to have certain emotional experiences. Games can be casual activities, intense duels, exciting adventures, and each of those types of experiences relies on a different rhythm of play. Rhythm can also be used to create investment in a game. This video talks about anticipation arcs in games. A well-crafted sense of anticipation leads to investment and excitement. (Go watch the video, because there's too much for me to break down here.) Rhythm is also powerful because once established a rhythm can be broken. Unexpectedness creates surprise. A succession of surprises can inspire a sense of discovery, however each surprise is likely to be less individually impactful than a single major plot twist. Too many surprises could just lead to a game feeling overly random. Breaks in rhythm should be carefully crafted to build the desired emotional experience. 

Rhythm is mechanical. Let's take a look at theme. Transportation is what most people mean when they talk about immersion. In other words, transportation occurs when the theme 'transports' you into the world of the game. Role-play is one method that can lead to immersion, however it is not the only method. Role-play is generally an 'above the table' activity in board games. To encourage role-play, designers should focus on mechanics with player interaction that requires communication: bluffing, trading, cooperation, etc. Then, those mechanics have to be closely tied thematically to who the player is playing as. While both games have high player interaction, Sheriff of Nottingham does an excellent job encouraging role-play; Bohnanza does not. Either related to role-play or not, relationships add verisimilitude and emotional impact to games. How does a PC relate to the world around it? Worlds feel more real when characters are in relationship with the people and things around them. This is why Sheriff of Nottingham works so well. Every player knows what their relationship is to the other players in a given round. Simulative actions are more mechanical methods to create transportation. They are mechanisms that simulate a real activity (for example, the pointing mechanism in Ca$h 'n Guns). I've mentioned it before, but Gil Hova's player/avatar/agent model is an excellent look at how the relationship between theme and mechanics can affect player experiences if you want to explore this dynamic further. 

Loss aversion is a psychological and economic phenomenon that has a huge impact on board game design. At its heart, loss aversion is the tenet that players are more bothered by losing something than they are excited by gaining something. There's a lot to unpack here for game designers and I highly recommend reading Achievement Relocked. The elements that jumped out to me while reading the book were the ones that provoked certain specific emotions. Clear consequences, created when actions affect the story of the game, build tension and investment because players know what they stand to gain or lose based on their decisions. Obfuscated outcomes have fewer emotional hooks (which is sometimes desirable when trying to avoid the "feels bad" experience in players). Permanence is clear consequences taken to its logical conclusion. The appeal of legacy games comes from the "permanent" effect your decisions has on the game. (Permanence is one way to enhance transportation as well.) One way to signal clear consequences of a decision is by creating scarcity. Scarcity indicates what players should value. Gaining or losing something that has clear value creates a stronger emotional response. Lastly, the endowment effect is the "tendency to give something more value because it belongs to you." Players are loathe to give up something they've been given, even if doing so is how you advance in the game. I'm going to dedicate a whole, separate post to this concept, because I think it can be leveraged to create truly interesting emotional experiences. 

This is just a collection of the methods I've come across (mostly) recently that designers can use to craft emotional experiences. Obviously, I think this is a topic that deserves more focus in board game design. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.