Elegance Vs. Obscurity

I had an amazing time at Tabletop Network '22. I came away with new ways of looking at design topics and several ideas for posts. This post follows some of my thoughts about another group's topic. 

I like this definition of elegance in board games: elegance is the elimination of unnecessary complexity. The elegance presentation at TTN this year did an excellent job of pointing to the various ways unnecessary complexity creeps into design. However, it is difficult for a designer to identify what is necessary complexity in their own designs. I think it could be helpful to take a look at what inelegance is in board games and how to avoid it. 

I think of the bad kind of inelegance as obscurity. I am not referring to hidden info or obscured scoring, but rather an experience that is hazy, foggy, muddy, or otherwise unclear. By identifying how much obscurity is in your game you also have a measure of how elegant the game is—the less obscurity, the more elegance is likely present. But how should we determine the amount of obscurity? 

Unintentional player confusion, via rules or components or what-have-you, is the easiest target to eliminate from your game. By this, I mean that you did not intend for players to be confused by those elements of your design and therefore their confusion is an undesirable by product of some sort of inelegance. Clarity and simplicity are the solution here. You can pretty well determine how elegant a game is or isn't by the amount of errata listed in BGG forums. 

However, sometimes inelegance can be a goal. Intentional player confusion can be a part of the play experience, especially in an atmospheric co-op. Or you may find that the game is more fun with a few rough edges left in rather than an overly smooth experience. These choices should be intentional. Intentional inelegance is a design choice; unintentional obscurity is not. 

I believe elegance is primarily about simplicity and clarity. Thus the more complexity  that is present the less elegant the game can be. However, a game can still be the most elegant within its genre of mechanism or weight. But speaking of weight, obscurity artificially increases the weight of a game. Many games would be noticeably lighter (and more welcoming) if the rules, graphics, and components had eliminated all unnecessary complexity. It feels increasingly gatekeeper-ish to me to publish a 'gamers' game that is heavier than necessary due to inelegant product design choices. 

Lastly, cleverness often gets conflated with elegance. I believe this is because the elegant choice is often the cleverest design solution. However, I do not believe there is full overlap between what is clever and what is elegant. Many times clever mechanics have to be removed from a game because they are too clunky within the overall play experience. Likewise, sometimes the simplest choices are the most elegant but not the most clever. 

To conclude, I'm not sure that complexity is the best way to think about elegance, because as designers we will tend to believe that all of our complexity is necessary. Obscurity (or muddiness, if you need a more visceral metaphor) allows us to ask questions of our design, such as "what is preventing players from accessing the fun parts of the game?" Or to put it another way, what poor design choices are obscuring the good ones?

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

Improving Thematic Engagement

I had an amazing time at Tabletop Network '22. I came away with new ways of looking at design topics and several ideas for posts. This post expands on several points made by the group I was in during the conference.

The Ludology episode GameTek 213.5—The Incan Gold Experiment discusses an experiment to see whether players would disengage with a theme over time. Having just re-listened to the episode, I have to say that the experiment didn't find anything definitive in this respect. However, most of us know by experience that it doesn't take very many plays of a game for us to stop engaging with the theme and instead focus on efficiency. 

The question then is: is this progression away from thematic engagement inevitable? Can this progression be slowed?

I think that there is a trap we could fall into if we try to make every play of a game as surprising and engaging thematically as a first play. The first time you view a piece of art or watch a movie or read a book will be a much different experience than subsequent exposures. The question should not be "how do I replicate this experience infinitely?" but "how do I make subsequent experiences also engaging?" I regularly reread novels; most people rewatch movies. Any given radio station only plays about 20 songs. Clearly humans have a capacity for repeated engagement with content. And if I asked you to name a song that always makes you cry you probably could, showing that we can repeatedly engage with emotional content as well. 

So what then is going on with our disengagement with theme in board games? I would posit that in early plays of a game we are more likely to engage with opt-in thematic elements and in later plays we ignore that content. Also, any emotions we experience will feel stronger because they are unexpected. In subsequent plays, we will expect the arc of the game and thus our emotional experience may be more muted. If the majority of the thematic experience relies on surface level theme and novelty, the theme likely will fade faster in subsequent plays. 

There are many other reasons for why thematic disengagement happens. However, as I am not a psychologist, I can only speak to processes that are within a designer's control. So, let us look at ways to improve the lifespan of thematic engagement rather than trying to settle the exact mechanisms of disengagement. 

Make the efficient play thematic. The main axiom of disengagement seems to be that players who are engaged with theme will play suboptimally and as they become disengaged will shift to more optimal play. On the one hand, I think that suboptimal game play should always be fun and theme can be a source of that fun. On the other hand, why can't the efficient play be thematic as well? If optimal play causes total disengagement with the theme, I have to wonder how well-knitted the theme is with gameplay to begin with. There are some games where it seems like it would be difficult to totally disengage with the theme, such as racing games like Flamme Rouge, where the efficient play (making use of slipstreams and only pulling ahead at the end) is the thematic play. My axiom for board games is that the win condition is the theme, and the rest of the fluff needs to align with that. 

Get players to speak in thematic terms. Speaking of thematic alignment, the words players speak while playing will drive engagement with the theme. In a race game, players will probably use terms like 'finish line' automatically. Your product design will affect whether players refer to the components by their color or a more thematic term. Board game design is all about crafting how players will use and experience your game. One aspect to pay attention to is how players speak and describe what they are doing during gameplay. If the language isn't thematic, the game experience likely isn't either. 

Continuing our focus on thematic alignment, player emotions should fit with the experience the theme provides. This is often touted as a way to avoid ludonarrative dissonance, but there is another reason. When you watch a horror movie, feeling scared deepens your experience of the movie. When players feel emotions that make sense for their avatar in the game, that deepens their experience of the game. These emotions feed back into the theme and can serve as a thematic reminder to experienced players of why they should care about the theme. 

Provide a clear narrative framework. Of course, the easiest way (I think it's cheating) to maintain thematic engagement is to make a narrative driven game. Forcing players to engage with a written narrative keeps their focus on the theme, even when the mechanics are unthematic. However, we can do similar things by providing a clear narrative framework with our mechanics and win conditions. By telling players who they are and what they want we allow them to become invested in the game world. If we then give them mechanics that flow logically from the game world we have established, we can co-create a narrative with our players.

Lastly, pay attention to the amount of calculation in the game. When players are spending a lot of time analyzing all possible moves, they are likely less engaged with the theme. While certain amounts of calculation will not detract from theme (and certain themes can align with calculation), narrative and calculation tend to be one or the other for our brains. When I am doing math I cannot also think about my avatar's desires and struggles. One solution is to alternate moments of math with narrative or to provide narrative check points during game pauses. Another solution is to make the calculation 'in character' for the avatar. Or to minimize calculation, which has a side benefit of speeding up gameplay.

By integrating theme at all levels of gameplay, designers can offer players richer experiences that unfold over multiple plays, where surface theme gives way to deeper mechanical theming. This allows players to explore the theme, perhaps moving back and forth between optimal and suboptimal strategies from play to play. 

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

On Satire

Satire is a deeply misunderstood genre. If we want to have satiric board games, it behooves us to understand it better. Satire is not another word for comedy. Satire is not another word for commentary. It's both, but it's not just both. Satire is "the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices." However, like most simple definitions of complex ideas, this does not adequately convey what satire is. You cannot simply make fun of people you find to be stupid and call it satire. So, let's take a closer look at what satire really is and how it can be expressed in board games. 

Satire seeks to "embarrass, humble, or discredit its targets." Those targets could be people, institutions, ideas, or systems. Satire may involve gentle, good-natured mocking or anger and outrage. Satire generally purports to be serious, mimicking the structure of the thing it is satirizing and pretending to values it does not hold. Satire must argue that something about its target is wrong and may call for some improvement of the situation. Satire employs parody, but must go beyond parody to commentary in order to be satire. (Munchkin is parody, not satire.) 

There are two key pillars of satire that often trip creators up. Firstly, satire "must take aim at a target that is larger or more powerful than the author." Satire must punch up. Punching down is just bullying. So, I cannot satirize an oppressed group, but in theory I could satirize their leaders if they hold considerably more power than I do. (This is highly context dependent and possibly a bad idea for other reasons, but we're only looking from the angle of defining satire at the moment.) 

The second is that the preponderance of the audience must be aware that your work is a satire. (Without labelling it as such.) In order to parody something in a way that expresses disapproval which is evident to the audience, satire usually employs an absurdism of extremes. The text of A Modest Proposal reads earnestly, but the suggestion it makes is absurd. Simply 'unrealistic' content does not go far enough to qualify as satire. Twilight Struggle examines seriously a political concept that has been throughly discredited. But the concept is not ridiculous enough for the average lay person to recognize it as absurd. I would classify Twilight Struggle as commentary but not satire. The side benefit of absurdity is that it generally adds humor to satire. (Comedy is a side effect, not the primary goal.)

There are some more general rules that I would put forth to board game designers trying to design a satiric game:

• The game needs to have a firm understanding of the subject matter. If too many of your details are ahistorical, your game will not be framed well enough for you to satirize your subject. For example, the thematic details of Puerto Rico are such a mess that the game can barely be said to be set in Puerto Rico. (I'm not saying Puerto Rico claims to be a satire, but that it couldn't if it wanted to.)
• The game needs to be self-aware of the harm done by the subject of the satire. Not only can the game not punch down, but it must understand how the framework it adopts has harmed various groups. Spirit Island is an example of self-aware commentary on colonialism. (It fails at being satire because it does not pretend to be pro-colonialism.) Many board games can appear self-aware when played by one group of players and not when played by another, such as Ladies & Gentlemen. This harkens back to one of our key pillars: the audience must be aware of the satire. 
• While the game must adopt the framework of the target, the game must be clearly not serious in its adoption. If most of your audience thinks you were serious, you failed at being satire. Applying your framework to an absurd extreme is the most easily recognizable form of satire, however you bear the risk that your audience may take your extremes seriously. See also: Fight Club, the movie, and its unfortunate fanboys. 
• The game must have a single, simple message. My game, Deadly Dowagers, contains two conflicting messages, one satiric and one cathartic. Since the cathartic message was emergent from the theme rather than intentional, I can't easily remove it to draw focus to the satire. As a result, the satire is muted and less apparent to the audience. I actually think this tension makes the commentary in the game more interesting, but it fails as effective satire. 

Now for a few best practices. I think, although I do not insist, that satire in board games needs to be absurd ideas with serious execution. The reverse, serious ideas with absurd execution, seems to fall down on a number of levels. But more generally, broad parody in the illustration seems like it would reliably undermine satire in board games. Satire uses parody but that does not mean that all forms of parody are suitable for satire. In the case of board games, ridiculous art has been used so often for purposes other than satire that the message would likely be lost or muddied. 

I also feel that board games are better suited to satirize systems and ideas rather than people or particular institutions. Highly topical satire tends to be ephemeral and the development cycle of a board game is not well suited to take aim at a person who may not be quite so relevant by the time the game is released (at least not if you want the game to be good.) Additionally, if you want the game to have broad appeal and age well, aiming at more general systems and injustices seems the better route. 

What game is a good example of satire? It's hard for me to say whether a game works as satire or not without playing it or listening to someone else critique it. (I'm relying on the critique of people I trust for most of the games mentioned in this post.) There is one game, though, that has all the hallmarks of satire on its face. Campaign for North Africa is (supposedly) a functional war game. It also appears to be a satire of war games as a genre. The play time and level of simulation are intentionally absurd and certainly self-aware. Richard Berg certainly knows the subject matter. I also don't believe he ever seriously expected anyone to play the full game. The message could be "some people take war games too seriously, but even they won't play this game." Campaign for North Africa is arguably satire as performance art rather than satire as board game, but it is the best fit for what I have been outlining. 

Even in literature, satire is relatively rare. Satire is extremely difficult to pull off well. But board games are well suited to commentary on systems and thus deserve exploration as vehicles for satire. Even barring that, many of the points I make here are good guide posts for more effective commentary in games. The main difference is the level of sincerity with which you present your subject matter. Critically thinking about systems and the impact they have is an admirable goal when designing a game, whether your game is satirical or not. 

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

Compounding Thematic Elements

I had an amazing time at Tabletop Network '22. I came away with new ways of looking at design topics and several ideas for upcoming posts. This post expands on several points made by the group I was in during the conference. 

If your design goal includes a transportive* thematic experience, a knitted theme may not be enough to provide that experience. In order to provide a deeper thematic experience, thematic elements must build on one another to add texture and tension to gameplay. There are a number of techniques you can employ that all fall under the umbrella of compounding thematic elements. 

When thematic elements are presented as separate items that primarily interact mechanically but not thematically with each other, a game will provide a thematic experience that is nonetheless more strongly focused on the mechanical experience. When thematic elements build on each other and respond to each other, the resulting experience will have a stronger focus on theme. 

Compounding thematic elements indicate a dynamic game world to players. A dynamic and responsive world provides a deeper thematic experience than a static world. Compounding elements may be as simple as synergies between resources, but for more dramatic effects you can utilize one or more of the following techniques. 

Progressive goals are way points or win conditions that change as players progress thru the game. Open world games and certain kinds of campaign games may employ progressive goals in order to hide the main conflict/antagonist from players at the beginning of the game. Other games may present all possible win conditions up front, but some may be locked until certain conditions are met. These types of goals must be tightly woven with the theme to produce a compounding thematic effect. So, while the 'You Win' card in Space Base is a progressive goal, it is not a thematic goal and thus does not qualify as a compounding thematic element. 

One way to keep players engaged with the theme is to have outside forces intrude on them during play. This can break players out of a pure numbers/efficiency mindset when executed well. Persistent effects, positive or negative, can shift player focus back to the game world. These effects are most impactful when layered on top of a thematic core game loop. Persistent effects can either be individual effects or global events that affect every player. Global events can be used to increase tension by providing an escalating threat to the players. Persistent effects can also raise tension by afflicting players with multiple negative effects at once. Multiple individual negative effects are a safer design choice for cooperative games, where a temporary goal may be to rescue a player from their negative effects. Multiple individual effects in competitive games will likely feel unfair to the player(s) who falls behind as a result of the effects. Global events are particularly poignant in competitive games, because they can unite the players in moments of shared frustration or elation. 

The goal of the mechanics discussed in this post is to create a game world that feels dynamic and a game arc that has thematic tension. Designers are lauded for their ability to interweave mechanisms together. The same care can be taken to interweave theme such that the end result is a game that is both thematically and mechanically compelling. 

*Transportation is an aspect of immersion. Absorption is another. I prefer the clarity of these terms rather than using immersion. 

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

Selective Thematic Abstraction

I had an amazing time at Tabletop Network '22. I came away with new ways of looking at design topics and several ideas for upcoming posts. This post expands on a point made by the group I was in during the conference. 

Tabletop board games require abstraction. Even simulations must choose what it is that they simulate. However, what you choose to abstract informs the story that your game tells. 

When learning to design lighting for the stage, designers are taught that the way to make something look brighter is to remove lights, not add them. When every light is on, nothing is emphasized. By turning some lights off, areas can be spotlighted to draw the audience's attention. The non-obvious result is that turning lights off can make a stage appear brighter. 

Abstraction works the same way when it comes to thematic expression in board games. If you want to tell a certain story or provide a certain experience within your theme, what you abstract is as important as what you simulate. Too many details often result in a cluttered experience where no clear story emerges. Whereas selective abstraction allows for your intended thematic experience to shine. 

An easy way to understand this concept is to compare two similar games: The Grizzled and The Coldest Night. Both are small, cooperative card games. Both involve playing a card from your hand on your turn to a shared tableau. Both have negative effect cards that can accumulate in front of a player. But the experience evoked by each is very different. 

The Grizzled leans into the importance of camaraderie between soldiers in WWI. The cards played into the shared tableau are less important thematically than helping your squad get what they need to stay alive. The well-being of your squad is the thematic goal of the game and succeeding in missions takes a back seat to that goal. The Grizzled accomplishes this by abstracting the fighting aspect of the theme away almost entirely and simulating the mental trauma caused by warfare. This design choice creates a play experience where the predominate emotion is empathy for the other people around the table. 

The Coldest Night, by contrast, has a stronger focus on the environmental setting of the game. In the game, players are trying to keep a fire burning all night by feeding it fuel scavenged from an abandoned house. The health of your group is still important, but it takes a back seat to the primary goal of keeping the fire burning. Unlike The Grizzled, The Coldest Night is set in a single location on a single night. The theme plays with a universal human fear of getting caught in the cold. Thematically, hope is centered around the fire, not fellow players. 

Neither game is more correct for what it chose to abstract vs. simulate. The Grizzled has more heads up gameplay as players discuss who they need to help. The Coldest Night is more heads down as players agonize over how to play out their hands. The Grizzled can pack a stronger emotional punch because the theme emphasizes relationships. However, it can also force players to make unthematic plays in order to win the game. By focusing on a simpler experience, The Coldest Night provides a stronger simulation. 

Importantly, neither game tries to emphasize both an environmental simulation and an emotional one. We don't know where we are in France in The Grizzled or why we are stuck with the other players in The Coldest Night. Those details aren't only unnecessary; they would detract from the clean experiences the games currently provide. 

Designers often interpret 'integrate theme and mechanics' to mean 'theme everything.' This is a good place to start. However if certain thematic details get in the way of the intended experience, you can streamline your thematic elements to better fit your vision. 

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

Discouragement is a Part of the Creative Process

Have you seen those author memes? The ones where the author goes back and forth between hating and loving their work. This post is basically about that. 

There are different types of discouragement. You might be discouraged by failure or other external influences. You might be discouraged by the long wait times involved in producing games (see this post about doldrums). Those forms of discouragement are frustrating and difficult, but for me nothing compares to the internal discouragement that is bound up with the act of creation. 

This form of discouragement is disconnected from whether you have received outside validation. Your game may be doing well with playtesters, but that doesn't stop your brain from telling you that you will fail. For me, this discouragement occurs at two points in the creative process: At the very beginning and at the very end. At the beginning of the process I am excited to run with a new idea—until I look at all the work I will need to do to make the game actually good. This is especially hard if I have just wrapped up a design that I feel is pretty good. To start back at square one with a not-yet-good design can be hard. Especially when there is no guarantee that the design will ever become good. (Some design deserve to be abandoned; read more here.) 

The other point where I get discouraged is at the very end. I have done most of the creative work and what's left is the professional work needed to get the design in front of publishers. Finishing projects can be difficult because it means admitting that they are as good as you are capable of getting them (and if they are rejected, it can feel like it is because you aren't good enough.) Plus, the end of a project means you have already done the fun stuff, so now all you have to look forward to is the hard stuff. 

Whether or not this is exactly true for you, it is human nature to be discouraged by our own creative output. Artists are stereotyped as moody for a reason. So, what can you do?

First, learn when you are likely to experience internal discouragement in your own design process. Try to differentiate from other types of discouragement. Learn to recognize internal discouragement as it arises. Then learn to set it aside. This may take external motivation, like an accountability partner or a commitment to a playtesting group. 

For me, my internal monolog looks like this: "I know I feel like a failure and I don't want to work on this game anymore. BUT, I always feel this way when putting together submission materials, and that feeling has no relation to the potential success of the game. So I am going to do the thing, even though it sucks." Then I get my husband to check my work, because sometimes really not wanting to do a thing makes me worse at proofreading.

The point is how you feel doesn't necessarily correspond with the quality of your work. Every creative person feels discouraged while creating. Recognizing this type of discouragement for what it is is a necessary step to becoming a better creator. 

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

Narrative Structure in Games

This topic could be a book by itself. Narrative structure is a complex subject in more traditional storytelling mediums to begin with. On top of that, mechanical game arcs are a layered topic for which there is no single, authoritative reference source. And discussing narrative arcs in games requires knowledge of both. I will leave the subject of game arcs as much as possible to other people and try to focus on some general concepts around narrative structure in board games. 

I have seen board gameplay described as 'all rising action.' I disagree, although I allow that that is a simple way to align most gameplay with traditional, three act structure. Any game with a single pivot point, like Clank!, has both rising and falling action. A boss-battler could be considered a single, climactic scene. Traditional narrative structures are easiest to incorporate into games when a game has a campaign mode or sequential scenarios, because of the ability to include different challenges and challenge levels that lead to a sense of story progression. 

There are, of course, different types of narrative structure, from slice of life to five act to absurdism. I'm not sure that translating gameplay arcs to existing narrative structures is all that useful to designers. I propose an analysis style more closely aligned with acting: scene work. I won't describe how actors go about scene work here, instead I want to jump straight to my suggested mode of narrative analysis. 

Scene work for game narrative starts with goals. The player character should have one major goal that drives them to perform the actions of the game. That goal should align with the win condition of the game. The player character will have any number of minor goals. Those goals will align with actions taken or attempted in the game. Minor goals might include completing a set of objects or achieving an objective first or claiming a card before someone else can. If the minor goals tend to fall into stages during gameplay that shift from one stage to the next, then the game has distinct scenes. If not, the game may only have one scene. Individual scenes will have different goals and strategies, but will further the major goal of the game. (If this all sounds like I am describing mechanical game arcs and not narrative, that is because acting and game design employ such similar language.)

Believable goals, especially minor goals, are the key to compelling characters. If I believe that a character is acting in accordance with their desires, that character comes alive. As a player, if character motivation makes sense, then I will be emotionally invested in my character. In a game without characters, I can still be invested in actions that further my goals thematically. However, I increasingly believe that it is interesting characters, not interesting stories, that matter for emotional investment. Interesting stories will arise if attention is paid to what characters want and what they are willing to do to get it. 

Of course, scenes are not just made up of goals, but obstacles and actions and resolutions. All of which should be pushing the player toward the major goal. Thinking in terms of goals and scenes can help ensure that the game narrative is thematically satisfying. 

You may find it helpful to think in terms of three act structure. You may find your game narratives naturally want to shape themselves into traditional structure, because that style of storytelling feels satisfying. There is nothing wrong with that. But designers do not need to feel limited by traditional structures (unless the game is text heavy, in which case different rules apply). 

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

On Success

I have two small games signed but not yet published. I am under no illusions that I am the next big thing in game design. That isn't what this post is about.

There are two big factors in success: putting in the work and not being so attached to your own ideas that you can't grow as a designer. The second factor is a state of mind that, which while important, can be hard to develop. So many, many people rely on the first factor as a way to brute force success. And it can work. 

My problem is that 'putting in the work' has had scope creep to match up with certain ideas of success. Some of the ideas of success are untrue; some merely raise expectations higher than I believe is healthy. Ideas such as "success looks like designing indie games as a full time job" (untrue) or "success looks like signing a game at least once a year" (too high expectations). 

Popular advice says that if you want to work in the industry you need to go to conventions. Multiple per year. The right conventions, too, so your local con might not cut it. You need to network. You should be playtesting regularly in a local group. You should also be online, in forums and playtesting discords. You should be playing lots of published games and listening to design focused podcasts. You should give back to the community through playtesting (at the very least), but really there's so much more you could be doing. 

And you just have to get over any hang ups you may have about doing any of that because that is how you become a successful designer. 

Just to be clear, I think this attitude is highly ableist. 

Let's start over. What is success? 

Success is achieving a goal or goals that you set for yourself (or that you consent to but were set by others). Setting healthy goals is an important step in the process. Healthy goals are achievable if you put in a healthy amount of work. What is healthy for you may not be what is healthy for someone else. 

What is the minimum amount of work to get a game signed by a publisher? You need to playtest with both designers and non-designers. That can be local or at a convention or online. (If online, also playtest some physically if at all possible.) Your game needs to be as done as you can get it. You need to research publishers who take submissions and what kinds of games they want. You need to submit, either via an online form or an in person pitch. That's it. You should also playtest other designers games whenever you get the chance. 

That's not to say that there aren't other ways of getting published, other routes to success. The route you take and the goals you set should be tailored to what you can reasonably accomplish. 

I have a hard time pushing myself to attend all the things I could otherwise fit into my budget and schedule. I don't like traveling alone, so I try to make any cons I attend have as high an impact as I can. Unfortunately, I have a harder time with online events. Online playtesting events send my anxiety through the roof. My skills are not as a community organizer, so when my local group has a hard time meeting in person, I just don't get playtesting done. I am not complaining. I am explaining that I have to prioritize what I have energy for. I end up prioritizing the events that will put me closest to achieving my goals. My industry presence looks like 2-3 cons a year (one of which is local to me), local playtests when they happen, a semi-active presence in online forums, and this blog. And it's apparently enough, because I'm reaching my goals at a speed I am comfortable with. I don't have the capability to fully design more than one small game a year (excluding shelved games) and I've been doing this for almost four years. Two games are signed, and I have two more I'd like to find homes for. That's good enough for me. 

If you find fun and/or fulfillment by being constantly active in the design community, that's great. But if you're like me, it's valid and okay and healthy to slow down and focus on manageable goals. You might find that some things you're told are important to do don't actually forward your goals at all (like participation in design contests). What's healthy for you may be significantly less than what I manage in a year. That's okay. I have found I get more done by working within my limits than by constantly trying to exceed them. 

Of course, there's the other factor of not being too attached to your own ideas and also luck to take into account. But I think you can get 80% of the way there by setting healthy goals and healthy expectations of how you will meet those goals. 

You don't have to do everything. Do what works for you. 

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

Making the Most of Pauses

Pauses are moments in gameplay when the game state takes precedent over the game world or when busywork intrudes upon the rhythm of play. Pauses allow players to catch their breath and check in on the game state. Pauses provide structure in the form of guide posts throughout the game. Pauses occur at the beginning and end of rounds, at the end of turns, during scoring, etc. 

Handled poorly, pauses can become interruptions. People have the ability to sustain a state of mind even when something distracts them. Imagine, for example, waking up in the night and needing a glass of water. If you are like me, you will leave the lights off and keep your task as brief as possible so as to never become fully alert, which makes returning to sleep that much easier. However, turning the lights on and having a conversation with the cat can make returning to sleep much more difficult. 

Pauses occur during transitions. The designer's job is to smooth transitions as much as possible. Carefully designed transitions will provide the benefits of a pause without breaking the absorption of the players. Good graphic design is a requirement. Intuitive rules are important. Transitions that make sense thematically can also help. 

If more time is spent in tinkering with the game state rather than the game world, pauses will inevitably become interruptions. This applies to set-up, take down, scoring, rules referencing, some AI management, etc, but also applies to other pure game state mechanics IF the appeal of the game is interacting with the game world. Usually, the draw of a drafting game is mechanical just as much as (or more than) thematic. However, the hook of an adventure game is getting to interact with the game world. Thus the adventure game is less tolerant of purely game state mechanisms than the drafting game is. This becomes an issue because adventure games (and narrative-rich games more generally) are usually more complicated than drafting games, and complicated games tend to have more upkeep. So we find ourselves with the issue that the games that are most harmed by interruptions tend to be games more susceptible to them. War games have solved this issue by making the simulative rules and upkeep a feature not a bug, but that has limited the audience for those games considerably. 

Here are some guidelines for handling pauses: 

-Minimize busywork. Busywork is always a pause and often an interruption. 

-Plan pauses that minimize downtime. Maybe your round structure allows for partial simultaneous play and partial turn-based. Pauses and distinct phases go hand in hand and provide non-mechanical benefits to the experience of play. The rulebook could also suggest that players who finish their turns/upkeep first should begin set up for the next round. 

-Theme everything, at first. Go overboard on thematic justification then pull back based on what playtesters  find to be cheesy. You may find new ways to bring parts of the game state into your game world.

-Theme around the action of the game. If your game world is simply layered onto your game state, you may not have any problems because the game state never will interrupt the game world. If, however, your game world is present in part of the game but not the rest, you are likely to inadvertently design interruptions into your game. Theming the game more closely around the gameplay is IMO the more fun solution to this problem. 

Remember that pauses are not bad and provide necessary structure to a game. The designer's job is to intentionally design pauses that augment rather than detract from the player experience. Plan your pauses lest the become interruptions. 

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

Game State vs. Game World

There is a core disambiguation you have to make when trying to integrate your mechanics with your theme: that of the game state and the game world. To understand the difference, we should first look at Gil Hova's player/avatar/agent model. The model proposes three representatives of self in a game: the player, the avatar, and the agent. The player is the person playing the game; the avatar is the thematic representation of the player in the game; the agent is the mechanical representation of the player in the game. Game state refers to the mechanical progression of gameplay and thus interacts with the player through the agent. The game world interacts with the player through the avatar. Hova asserts that high overlap between agent and avatar results in a deeply thematic experience. However, sometimes actions must be mechanical for simplicity's sake, so full overlap is rare. 

Knowing where to focus on theme and where not to is an important skill for a designer to have. When an element will affect the game world it should be thematic. When an element only interacts with the agential side of play, trying to force a theme can feel unnatural. Let's look at some common cases. In card drafting games, the drafting phase is typically agential and separated from the theme. In order to make a drafting phase feel thematic, a game would have to relate the physical actions and mental decisions of selecting cards to the theme in a simulative way to overcome the strong agential decisions being made. Since cards, especially in the hand, are inherently abstract, this has proven difficult to do. The best example of thematic drafting is Sushi Roll, a dice drafting game where the dice slide around on conveyor belt tiles. The action of selecting something chunky and placing it in front of you is the same action you take at an actual sushi restaurant. Sushi Go! cannot express the same level of theme because passing a hand of cards doesn't feel close enough to a conveyor belt sliding by. The mechanics of Sushi Go! are inspired by the theme but the theme does not feel as present. Deck builders have the same problems and for the same reasons: cards and the acts of acquiring them and shuffling them are too abstract (or too tied to our sense memory of playing card games) to feel thematic. 

These mechanisms primarily affect the game state and have little affect on the game world. If you take into account a player's emotional state throughout gameplay, you can turn agential play back into avatar play through what I call 'reverse bleed,' but often you are better off letting purely agential mechanisms remain somewhat abstract. You can still use thematic icons and art but there is danger in pushing the theme too hard. Audiences want to watch movies that make them feel sad, not movies that claim to be sad without earning any real emotional payoff. Games that try too hard to be thematic (in the wrong ways) will feel weaker than games that understand where the emotional payoff of the theme comes from. Usually in a multi-board game you will have a board where the characters interact with locations and a board or section of board that exists purely to track game state. The Quacks of Quedlinburg is an excellent example of this. The score board tracks rounds and scores (and rat tails and ingredient unlocks). It is purely agential. The art is there but players interact with it as players, not as alchemists. The player boards (and the ingredient market) exist in the game world. Players are placing ingredients in a pot hoping it will not explode. The theme is not simulative or transportive, but it is still present and actions in the game world affect the narrative of the alchemists in the game world (however thin that narrative may be). 

Strong thematic choices in elements that affect the game world are always a good idea. Pushing too much theme into primarily agential elements can be a mistake. However, the trickiest pieces of thematic design are the elements that aren't clearly one or the other. Many euro games have upgrade boards or action selection boards that mix agential play with avatar play. The act of selecting from a menu of mechanical choices is abstract, but the choices are often thematic or a mix of thematic and abstract. I would recommend trying to keep all the actions offered on such a menu at the same level of thematic expression. Flipping back and forth between thematic and abstract choices feels messy and confusing as a player. 

By identifying which elements of your game take place outside of the game world, you can also take steps to minimize the breaks in immersion. Anyone who has taken an acting class should be able to tell you that audiences don't find actors pausing for laughter to be unrealistic. For an audience member, laughing effectively stopped their perception of time. An entire agential phase can occur without disrupting immersion if players are using the phase as a pause and not an interrupt. Interruptions are unexpected and unwelcome breaks in the flow of the game. Pauses can be used for pacing, to catch your breath, or to whet your imagination. Setting up a new scenario in a campaign, for instance, can prime players for the action that is to come by teasing the sorts of obstacles they might encounter, such as the terrain. Action selection menus can function the same way in a euro game, teasing options for how the game world can develop based on the choices made by the agent. Learning how to pause rather than interrupt the flow of play creates integrated experiences that will feel more thematic even when they technically aren't, they're just better executed.  

Knowing which parts of your game affect the game world and which only affect the game state leads to better thematic design. Understanding pauses and interruptions leads to better experience design. 

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

Theming Upgrades

I played Haspelknecht recently, a surprisingly thematic euro game about the early days of coal mining. I like the action selection mechanism, and I find the core loop to be compelling both narratively and gameplay-wise. But I probably won't ever play it again. Why? The upgrade system. The upgrade system in Haspelknecht provides much of the player interaction and takes up the majority of the shared play space. The upgrades have illustrations that point to theme. Some of the mechanics are more thematic than others, but it's clear an effort was made. And I absolutely hate the system. Most of the time, you are giving up opportunities to interact with the (very fun) core loop in order to be rewarded less by getting an 'upgrade'. Astute players will realize, however, that the mere act of having been to an upgrade spot is the most powerful way to get points in the game. The game is rewarding you for interacting with the much less fun part of the game by providing much less thematic incentives. Want to mine coal all the coal? You will probably lose to the person going after the highest numeric value upgrade spots. Lest I sound bitter for having lost the time I played (I did), I think I could love this game if it were slightly rebalanced to put the emphasis back on the core loop or if the upgrade system gave me more thematic reasons and in game rewards for interacting with it. I also did not think all of the upgrades were terrible, just that most of them weren't compelling. 

I've written before about win conditions and player powers needing to be thematic. This is another example of gameplay goals needing to line up with thematic goals. I wanted to mine coal, pump water, and expand shafts. The game wanted me to race for special action opportunities that were more expensive than the regular actions without being particularly better but the act of choosing them would earn me end game points. What I am looking for is thematic incentives to interact with what the designer intends to be a central draw of the game. As a player, my goal for each turn is to 1) do the fun thing and 2) make progress toward winning. As a player who likes theme and is playing a thematic game, 'do the fun thing' means taking a thematic action that changes the game world and not just the game state. When I mine coal, that coal is removed and a new coal vein is exposed. When I take and upgrade, I have access to other possible upgrades. One of those two options is significantly more fun than the other. 

Some games get a lot of mileage out of putting 'do the fun thing' in tension with 'make progress toward winning'. But often those games present that tension in choices you are making within a single system, such as engine building. You can build your engine creatively or efficiently, and one way will give you a sense of satisfaction and  the other will give you the victory. In the context of this post, you can play efficiently within thematic systems. You will have a harder time playing thematically within unthematic systems. Each upgrade functions as a mini-achievement goal that should be just as thematic as the overall goal of gameplay. 

Not every element of a game has to be thematic. I like the action apportionment mechanics in Haspelknecht and they are very abstract. But those mechanics apply to what I can do as a player. The player board is purely thematic and applies to what the characters are doing. The upgrade system applies to my mine, my resources, my characters, and also my action economy. It isn't one thing or the other. I want it to be thematic because I like theme. But I like the pure abstract action selection, because its system applies to me as a player, so perhaps if the upgrade system were more abstract I could like it more for its consistency if nothing else. 

Changes to the game world, like upgrades, need to feel thematic and motivated by the world. If they are important to good strategy, they should also be incentivized by scoring and rewards but also by fun. Make the important parts of the mechanics at least as fun as the other bits. One way to do that is theme. Upgrades give players opportunity to make improvements to the the game world. This is both psychologically and narratively appealing. Better theming of mechanics can make games more fun by appealing to more drives, desires, and areas of the brain at once whilst still maintaining the strategic challenge of a dry euro. 

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

My Favorite Prototyping Hacks

My (physical) prototyping philosophy is to use materials that are fast, cheap, and durable. To that end there are a few techniques that I use that streamline the amount of supplies I need to prototype. Here's my basic supply list:

Cereal boxes—Cereal boxes are OP. You can cut them with scissors, draw directly on the unprinted side, sticker them up, etc. When I need a board with a backing, I reach for cereal box cardboard. Also, I don't need to store very much, because in my house cereal boxes are constantly moving from the pantry to the recycling bin. 

Full Sheet sticker paper—Print on it, then stick it on what can't fit in your printer. I use it most for tokens and boards. Buy in larger packs or it gets expensive. 

Sheet protectors—Transparent pockets that you can slide paper into. Great for simple boards and for keeping sell sheets and rules together. Also good for organizing print and plays. 

Winks—Old school tiddlywinks were more robust than what you can get today, but either are great for tokens. I have a Singer sewing supply box full of winks. 

Cheap card sleeves and playing cards—I don't bother with nice sleeves. Get some playing cards from a thrift store and the cheapest sleeves you can find. 

Plastic centimeter cubes—A 500 piece set of cubes that are various colors but all the same size is worth having. I usually switch from cubes to tokens during the design process, but I still get a decent amount of use out of these.

I also use scissors, printer paper, a color printer, markers, pencils, note cards and dry erase markers, but that's about it for most situations. I also sometimes use dry erase cards and boards for early game ideas, but I have reservations about it. Some game ideas get shelved in that stage and my dry erase components slowly disappear until I upgrade my prototype or decide to disassemble it. Note cards or blank cards (picked up from an Unpub event) are cheaper than eternally buying more dry erase components. I'll write on note cards in pencil and erase it when I have better components or when I disassemble the prototype, so it isn't all that wasteful. I should also mention that I have a policy of not plundering a functional game for bits. If I come into possession of a game that I don't care for, I will give it away if it is still playable (standard playing cards are the exception). However, I have helped clean out old busted games from the homes of two relatives, and the ones deemed unplayable were fair game. Using parts of an otherwise playable game seems wasteful to me. I do use components out of games I own for solo playtests, but I return those bits when I am done with them. 

I have a few favorite methods of making components. 

Boards—For boards I either print on printer paper then stick it in a sheet protector or I print on sticker paper and adhere it to cereal box cardboard. Which method depends on how much abuse it needs to take and how confident I am that the layout won't change. Sheet protectors have the added bonus that you can mark them up with dry erase marker to test changes without drawing on your board. 

Dials—I recently needed to make dials for a six player game. Cereal box cardboard works here as well. You could sticker it, but I drew numbers directly on the cardboard. I can add stickers later if I need it to look nicer. Here's my secret component hack: brad paper fasteners. You know those two pronged, gold things with the round heads? You can buy them in boxes of at least 100 from any office supply store (or Target, which is where I found some). They are about a third the cost for the same amount of plastic screws through the Game Crafter. 

Tokens—Sometimes I punch out cardboard rounds for tokens, especially for games I'm not sure will make it to playtesting. But my preferred token method is printing icons on sticker paper and adhering it to winks. Winks are durable, make the tokens feel a bit more polished, and don't have to be cut out. 

Transparent cards—I already like card sleeves for regular cards (although I use unsleeved card stock in certain cases). You could use really robust sleeves as transparent cards, but I prefer cheap sleeves and cut up transparency/acetate. I sticker then sleeve the acetate. This protects the sticker bits and means that if I need to replace a sticker I don't risk tearing the sleeve. Not a great method for large format cards with layered art, because the added layers per card make the stacks get cloudy even at three deep. 

I have a craft supply box full of other random components I have collected in the last four years, but I tend to only dive into it for first player tokens and the occasional standee. If I decided I needed the shelf space I could easily downsize to the materials I mentioned above in this post. I certainly wouldn't buy anything not mentioned in this post unless it was for a specific game I was working on. I have sworn off buying interesting tidbits for the inspiration they could provide. 

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

Scope and Resolution

This post stems from a recent video on Shelf Stories about how history is present in war-games and euro games. The video lightly touches on scope and resolution as topics that I would like to discuss more here. 

Two important concepts within narrative framing are scope and resolution. Scope refers to how focused or wide-ranging the theme is. Scope is largely a function of setting. The types of actions in a wide-scope civ builder and a narrow-scope civ builder are going to be similar, largely because the genre dictates that they must be. It is the thematic details of the setting that establish the scope. 

Resolution refers to how detailed or abstracted the theme is. A low resolution game abstracts most of the theme. A high resolution game models the theme as much as possible with the mechanics. Low resolution games may or may not have complex mechanics, but a high resolution game must have at least a minimum amount of complexity in order to accurately model the theme. The wider the scope, the more complexity is needed for a high resolution game. Long war-games tend to be wide scope and high resolution. Civ games are usually wide scope and low resolution. Euro games are often low resolution regardless of scope. 

Increasing resolution adds complexity, because mechanics have to be added to model the theme. The wider the scope, the more complexity required for high resolution. Greater complexity means not only more rules overhead, but usually longer gameplay time. Narrow scope themes can achieve high resolution without as much added complexity. High resolution also requires greater levels of research when developing non-fiction themes. The wider the scope the more research is required. 

High resolution, regardless of scope, results in more work for designers. Many popular games are 'essentially abstracts,' aka low resolution games. Why, therefore, should designers strive for higher resolutions in their themes? 

• Players like thematic games. They like abstract games, too, but those we already have in abundance.   Higher resolution themes, especially in shorter, more accessible games, can more easily stand out from the crowd of games published each year. 
• Higher resolution themes have better hooks and are easier to market. Trading in the ancient world is a very generic and overdone theme. Petra is a higher resolution version of that theme that is more memorable because of its specificity. 
• Higher resolution themes have more intuitive rules. Again, low resolution mechanics are more abstract. Abstract rules are less intuitive than rules with thematic logic behind them. 

I want to see more high resolution, narrow scope games. I love rich, thematic detail in game mechanisms, and I think that is much easier to achieve in a narrow scope theme. However, adding scope and resolution to your toolkit allows you to adjust the dials of your theme to better achieve your design vision or better connect with your intended audience. 

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

How to Have Good Ideas

Have you ever been jealous of a game that had a really good concept? Do you ever feel like your ideas just aren't as good as other designers? The good news is, good ideas are more likely the result of iteration, not inspiration. 

Chances are, your initial inspiration isn't a great idea. No idea survives contact with a first playtest. As we develop our designs, they get become better ideas. However, "just work on it longer" is NOT a recipe for having better ideas. It's part of it, but not even the biggest part. 

The most important step is to develop a habit of curiosity. Be interested in the world around you. Learn about how and why things work the way they do. Read books; watch documentaries; listen to podcasts. Research anything you find intriguing. Abstracts of scholarly papers are a good place to find succinct information. I've been known to read dissertations if they're available for free online. The inspiration for a recent design of mine came from a joke in a TV show that was based on a real holiday tradition. My research led me to a first-hand account of the tradition as practiced in the 19th century. I should note that fiction can be as valuable as non-fiction. However, media that allows for deep dives tends to work better. Don't just watch a movie; study an entire genre. On the mechanics side, this means playing lots of games. (Or watching actual plays. I'm not sure it matters which you do.) Most importantly, be interested and follow your interests. 

This habit overtime will build what I think of as an idea compost heap. Plants can more easily spring up from a compost heap that has had a lot of material added and then allowed to settle. The media you consume is information that can become ideas. It is not by itself ideas or even research. (Research is what happens after you have an idea.) The information you absorb will settle in your mind. Then when you start working on new designs, ideas will begin to sprout. 

But where do you start, when you begin a design from scratch? I don't think the way we talk about starting with theme or mechanics is particularly useful or descriptive. Most design ideas start as an attempt to answer a question—what would a game about X look like? Asking 'what if' is a powerful tool at any point in the design process but perhaps especially at the beginning. Reflecting on the question you are attempting to answer is also an important tool. Ask yourself, "Is this question interesting? Is there another question about this topic that would be more interesting to answer?" Asking interesting questions leads to more interesting design choices. 

The types of questions you ask may begin from a number of different places: mechanics, theme, components, title, experience, etc. But where you begin is not as important as where you end up. And an over-emphasis on the starting point can lead designers to think that ideas need to start out good. Or that the starting point has to be purely one thing or another. 

Often designs start as a question that combines both theme and mechanics: How can I mechanically represent this real world concept? What theme would fit with this abstract mechanism? Or questions may combine emotion and mechanics or theme: How can I make a worker placement game feel more tense? How can my design give the experience of riding a roller coaster, instead of mechanically simulating a roller coaster? 

As your design develops, you will add questions that need to be answered. If your initial question was about theme and mechanics, you will need to ask, "What experience does this combination provide? Is it the kind of experience I want players to have?" 

At any stage of design, you should reflect on the questions you are asking and return to the question, "Is this interesting? Does it hold my interest?" If the answer is no, it is time to iterate. Find new answers and see if any spark ideas that will take the design in new directions. Really good ideas come from iteration. 

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

Intent and Interpretation

Which is more important: what the designer intended or what the audience experienced? I'm not sure this discussion happens explicitly all that often around board games, but it exists as an undercurrent when we discuss offensive themes and artistic freedom. 

Here's my take. Authorial intent is important—inasmuch as the original context of a work is important. Audience interpretation, however, is more important to the longevity of a work. Yet, I remain convinced that you cannot make good art without clear intent. Where does that leave us? 

I think it is easier for someone who works in theatre to remember that all art is a collaboration between the artist(s) and the audience. When the artist is siloed from large swaths of the audience it is easier to believe that their interpretations matter less than my artistic vision. After all, my vision is the only thing I can control, isn't it? 

This blog defines art as any craft that places a particular focus on the emotional response of the audience to the work. As I have written previously, artists can create emotions in their audience predictably. After a fashion, skilled artists are skilled manipulators. Sad songs make us cry; happy songs make us dance. To a thoughtful artist, audience interpretation is bound up with artist intent. I intend my audience to feel and thus interpret those feelings. 

But what if an audience interpretation pulls the work in a far different direction than the artist intended? To make art publicly is to give your art to audience for interpretation. In other words, if you don't want any sort of audience interpretation, don't share your work. To make art is to run the risk that the art will be set aside by the audience or that it will live on in a changed state that barely resembles your vision. 

Part of audience interpretation will include what you meant to make when you produced your art. But the value of the art to the audience is a value that arises from within the viewer. The viewer cannot be told how to value your art. 

If the audience finds fault with your art, you have the choice to stand by your original intent regardless of audience interpretation or you can change your art to more effectively communicate your intent to your audience. (Unless your intent is to offend, in which case you have succeeded.) 

Change your art? Who does that? Other than movie directors, Renaissance painters, musicians releasing remixes.... Art is a conversation with an audience. If you want the audience to listen, you have to be listening as well. 

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

Why Learn Theory?

Youtube food journalist Adam Ragusea has more than once observed that great chefs know what works but frequently are wrong about why something works. If you know what works, you don't necessarily need to know why in order to perform a given technique. So, why learn theory at all? Board game design has been chugging along since the nineties mostly through design iteration and oral tradition. When is it important to know why something works?

I believe that formalized knowledge (and, to an extent, formal training) makes for more competent practitioners who can work more efficiently. Chefs who understand the real reason behind a technique are better equipped to alter a recipe or make adjustments to a technique in order to make something that is both new and tasty. Knowing what the technique is actually doing makes it easier to change or replace. Better understanding of what a mechanism is accomplishing means zeroing in on what could replace it with fewer false starts. I think designers generally understand this concept even if they've never thought about it explicitly. 

Where we get tripped up is in believing that some knowledge is ineffable. Belief that certain things can only be learned by years of experience (or by lucking into something that works) does two things. First, it trains us to believe that inefficiency is a feature, not a bug. In other words, that the years of grinding away are a necessary part of the process before we can produce anything of quality. Second, it stops us from exploring concepts that appear on the outside to be abstract or ethereal. Exploring abstract concepts helps us think more flexibly. Flexible thinking makes us better designers. And that's before we account for the benefit of learning the abstract concepts themselves. 

I firmly believe that there are any number of concepts that are extremely helpful to absorb then sort of forget. This seems to be the basis of a lot of arts education. Certain concepts can be recalled specifically when trouble shooting, but are more often utilized instinctively when creating. (This is also why you can skip formal learning, but it takes longer to figure out what works through trial and error.) The concepts I write about here trend toward that foundational sort of theory, the kind you are meant to forget. Think of these concepts as an optical illusion that once you begin to see it a certain way you can't go back to your initial confusion. This is the type of theory that teaches you not what to do but how to see. 

I am glad to see that some abstract concepts are making their way into the board game design canon. Psychology is the front runner at the moment. Learning aspects of psychology and applying it to board games is a cornerstone of the 'designing for experience' movement. Achievement Relocked is an excellent foray into the importance of psychological concepts in game design. I lucked into making loss aversion work for me, but understanding how it works makes me a better designer. 

There is a whole host of other concepts, however. None of them are essential anymore than understanding the types of auctions is essential to being a game designer. Instead they add more colors to you design palette. Concepts like art design theory, immersion, and resonance. 

For me, these concepts are far easier to grasp than probabilities or data merge. But everyone's brains learn differently, and what comes easily to me will appear as nonsense to someone else (and vice versa). I am reminded of the sound engineer that I took a drawing class with. She went from zero sound experience to national tours in 2-3 years. But she couldn't quiet the analytical part of her brain long enough to make much progress drawing. In contrast, no matter how many times I learn how to set up sound equipment, the knowledge seems to slide right out of my head. But drawing and painting concepts stick even though I wasn't a good artist prior to taking classes. This is why I keep coming at topics from several different angles—I want to find ways of explaining that will be absorbed by as many brains as possible. But not everyone can or needs to design using the approaches I use. 

Why learn theory? It will make you a better designer. And because you never know what bits you learn will end up being useful down the road. And if you learn something that doesn't stick, well, that knowledge probably ended up in the same place as my knowledge of how to properly hook up an amp. And that's okay. There isn't going to be a test. 

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

Practitioner Knowledge

(This post serves as a rebuttal to some of the discussion around terminology in Ludology 278.)

How we talk about games changes based on our audience. General audiences need accessible language and the fewest specialized terms possible. For instance, the word 'drafting' does not appear in the rulebook for Sushi Go!. Enthusiast audiences tolerate a high amount of terminology, the acquisition of which is considered part of the initiation process. However, enthusiast audiences don't necessarily tolerate nuanced, under-the-hood process discussions. For instance, discussing whether colonial themes are appropriate narratives to keep returning to in new games is seen by a large section of this audience as "limiting the artistic process." (In my opinion, the problem here is showing the enthusiast audience part of how the sausage is made, rather than the whole process or not at all.) Academic writers and audiences use highly specialized terms that borrow from other academic fields and can be incomprehensible to non-academics. When we talk about games we should use the language that fits best with the audience we are speaking to.

The final group in our subset of gaming languages is practitioners. Practitioners are those who work in a field at a practical level. Practitioners exist between enthusiasts and academics. Enthusiasts receive many of their terms from practitioners, as do academics. However, practitioner language has a unique purpose. Practitioner language must be practical, precise, and internally consistent. Academics can define terms to mean certain things in different papers. Practitioners don't have the luxury of listing their definitions every time they use a term. Practitioners must also be more precise than enthusiasts. Overtime, practitioner language can become as incomprehensible as academic language, only more specialized because it serves a single field. 

Sometimes this means that practitioners will rename words that are in common use elsewhere. For example, in theatrical lighting the word 'lamp' refers to what non-practitioners would call a 'bulb.' At the same time, it is common for theatre sets to have floor and table lamps onstage. However, those lamps are usually referred to as 'practicals' (or practical fixtures, i.e. a light source that is visible to the audience). Specialized fields use their own names for the things they work with even if those things already have commonly used names. 

As board game design develops as a practice, terms will evolve to be more precise and to meet the needs of the practitioner, in this case the designer. As a result some terms will change, some will be created, and some will be discarded. This is normal, especially in specialized artistic fields. As texts are written, many of these words will be codified. A shared language enables practitioners to do their jobs efficiently and with as little confusion as possible. 

When I write about definitions and concepts on this blog, I am writing to the practitioner. Neither consumers nor academics need to know the difference between an associated action and a metaphoric action. On the other hand, practitioners need to know precisely what is meant by theme, immersion, resonance, and simulation—all terms that are currently used to mean a wide variety of things. Selecting a single practitioner definition (and creating more terms to fill in the gaps) is not arrogant; it is practical. It is also inevitable. (Trust me, you don't want to say 'light bulb' in front of a theatre lighting person.)

We need to be more clear about who our audience is (and by extension what type of information they have access to) and tailor our language accordingly. But we also have to develop our language as practitioners. Language shapes knowledge. The more precise words we have in our shared language, the more our knowledge can grow. 

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

How Research Informs Theme

Why research theme? Shouldn't gameplay be prioritized over theme? I usually spend at least several days researching theme early in my design process. My research helps shape my intended core experience which informs how my core loop develops. While researching, I always find ideas better than anything I could invent. But in the interest of actually writing a full post today, here are four more ways research will have a positive impact on your game. 

Abstraction

The predominant argument against extensive thematic research is that games are abstractions, and as such they cannot present very much in the way of thematic detail, especially mechanically—so why bother spending valuable design time researching? However, abstraction from lack of knowledge conveys ideas more poorly than abstraction from knowledge of a subject. Abstraction is the removal of details in order to present a more simplified representation of a concept. Knowing what details to preserve and which to remove requires an understanding of the subject you are abstracting. I prefer Bang! to all other social deduction games that I have played in part because it does the best job at evoking the theme, both subject and setting. Yet few people would list Bang! if they were asked to list strongly thematic games. The thematic experience is effective but not extensive; the theme works because of which details are preserved in a fairly simple game. 

Verisimilitude

Familiarity with your theme enables you to add the small flourishes that make the game feel grounded in something real. Attention to small details will make your game world feel as though there is a fully formed world that exists beyond the constraints of the game. This is especially true for players who have some prior knowledge of a subject. Players may not notice every detail that flows smoothly with a game, but if there is something that sticks out to them as wrong they will fixate on that detail. Keep in mind that a world you invented will most likely still have elements that exist in reality. Some of my favorite fantasy authors have gotten more mileage out of using obscure but real details than made up ones. Likewise, many sci-fi authors are well versed in space/technology design and research in order to present some plausible elements alongside less plausible ones. Research within genre media can also be important. If you want to play into tropes or against tropes, you have to know what the tropes are. 

Emotional Knowledge 

When you are familiar with a subject, you can better judge how lightly or seriously you can present it. Understanding the emotional content of a subject requires more than just cursory knowledge. You have to know the subject well enough to understand how knowledgeable players will feel when they play your game. Most people will forgive the details you sacrifice to the abstraction of gameplay as long as the game 'feels' like the theme. Playtesting can help reveal the experience a game will provide, but is limited by the demographics and proclivities of your playtesters. Cultural consultants can help, but awareness of pitfalls at the beginning of a project will be useful both to you and any cultural consultants brought in later in the process. 

Resonance

Resonance is familiarity plus unexpectedness minus chaff. Verisimilitude covers familiarity; abstraction covers chaff. That leaves unexpectedness. Research can reveal delightfully true details that will make your game more memorable by their inclusion. For example, I found a list of real Victorian charities to use as flavor text in Deadly Dowagers. The names were far funnier than anything I could come up with and felt more appropriate to the setting because they are contemporary to the setting. Instead of using flavor text to display my own cleverness, I creatively curate details that shine a light on all the wacky, delightful things that already exist in the world. 

Yes, you should research your theme. But you should research with an eye for design. Learn how the people closest to the subject matter feel about it. Learn enough of the details to know which to leave out and which to leave in. Make sure to leave in some of the most memorable details, even if they only make it into the rulebook. The amount of time spent on research will have an outsized impact on your final product. 

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

Ways to Express Setting

Two weeks ago, I wrote about setting in a more mechanics forward way. This post expands upon that one by exploring the types of thematic elements to be considered when expressing setting in a game. 

The key to a good setting that is integrated into a game is research. Unfortunately, you can have a research degree in your theme and still not know how to express those details in your game. Design is the process by which we curate which details are expressed and in what way. Setting is a very broad term that can be broken down into a few more specific categories. Not every game needs every possible expression of setting, but hopefully thinking about setting in a variety of ways will help you to come up with more immersive, thematic solutions during the design process. 

Setting as a Physical Place

Geographic location can be shown via maps and illustration or thru the types of actions and resources available. A house will be illustrated differently than a mountain but will also provide a different environment for players to interact with. Maybe a necessary resource isn't found in the location where the game takes place. One way to show that would be to have that resource only available thru purchase rather than collection. Different locations will also have different accumulations of natural phenomena. While laws of physics don't change, natural forces will be more present or less present in different locations. Game designs may seek to capture temperature, precipitation, natural disaster, gravity, air current/wind, biome growth, natural selection, etc. in their mechanisms. The Coldest Night models severe cold thru negative effect cards, and most of the game focuses on building a fire without smothering it. Attention to the amount of thematic time elapsed within turns and between turns can make actions feel more grounded in reality. Some actions may take longer to accomplish than others; actions that require more time mechanically should also require more time thematically (and possibly vice versa). 

Setting as Anthropology 

Settings that contain intelligent life forms will be impacted by those life forms even if they are not represented in the game. Petrichor has players controlling clouds whose stated purpose is to water crops, specifically, as opposed to plants more generally. The existence of crops (and, in an expansion, cows) provides a setting where human farmers are active participants in the life cycle, even if they are not depicted in the game. Where intelligent life has an impact on setting, there are a number of ways that can be represented. History, like geography, can permeate illustrations as well as mechanisms. On the illustration side, shiny new buildings deliver a different concept of history than ruins do. On the mechanic side, knowing your setting's history can help tailor the rules to give a better sense of why things work the way they do in this setting. Games with combat especially benefit from having a sense of why the conflict exists, of what is worth dying for. Local laws or politics also add justification for certain rules, but in turn can add immersion by implying there are in-world lawmakers behind the rules. Even if you are playing as the lawmakers, older laws or traditions could impose restrictions on how you must act. Traditions are one aspect of cultural mores. Cultural mores are social guidelines that are enforced by a particular culture. Cultural mores could include religious practices, acceptable dress, food taboos, good manners, etc. Many laws are universal across cultures, such as prohibition of stealing, but cultural mores are distinct to a specific culture. Representing cultural mores or values in some way helps your setting feel like it belongs to a specific culture instead of using that culture as window dressing. 

Setting as Artistic Expression

Setting does not have to be simply a realistic representation of the physical or cultural traits of a location. Setting can be stylized for emotional effect. Time, as artistic expression and not realistic simulation, can be used to give a sense of urgency or calm: the pace of the gameplay is a major component of a game's emotional atmosphere. Color choice and line quality are aspects of illustration that convey atmosphere. Being able to communicate what kind of atmosphere your setting has is important even if you aren't a visual artist. For example, you may need to give guidelines to an illustrator that the art should have muted colors and flowing lines, or dark, saturated colors and sharp, abrupt lines. Those instructions leave plenty of room for the creativity of the illustrator but they each convey very different atmospheres. Genre tropes can provide shortcuts to conveying atmosphere thru illustration or thematic labeling of actions and resources. By presenting familiar tropes, you provide players with clues for what to expect from the experience of play. The relative intensity of gameplay creates an atmosphere for the game that will either work with or against your setting. Tight and tense mechanics provide a different experience than cozy and breezy mechanics. The setting can reinforce the experience of the mechanics or it can mitigate that feeling (e.g. Root) or it can provide commentary on the type of experience provided by the mechanics (see below) or it can feel mismatched and lead to player dissatisfaction. 

Setting as Commentary

Setting can never be totally divorced from the cultural context of the audience that is consuming the media. Setting a game in a particular time and place will convey meaning to players, often in the form of subtext. The Grizzled works as a commentary on war because it is set in a particularly horrific war that is also far enough removed in history that no one alive today fought in it. The intended audience is also familiar enough with WWI that they can jump right in with limited explanation. The commentary is fairly surface level (war is more sad than fun), thus not risking misinterpretation. Some games present certain themes as good in order to point out that they are bad, to mixed results, especially if the game lionizes particular behaviors. In other media, settings can be metaphors used to comment on contemporary issues. Board games are only beginning to explore satire and commentary, and I am unaware of a published game that makes a point about something different from what the game purports to be about. (The play The Crucible, for instance, is set during the Salem witch trials but is a commentary on McCarthyism.) I anticipate that over time board games will expand more into the territory of intentional commentary. I wouldn't recommend new designers start at this point. However, it is important to acknowledge that the hobby is filled with games that are unintentional commentaries in which perspectives they elevate and which they ignore. 

This is the kind of work, the sorts of considerations, required when we so off-handedly say, "Just integrate the theme with the mechanics." In addition to story structure aligning with game structure, we also must give our settings enough touchstones to provide a sense of place: geographical, anthropological, atmospheric, or metaphoric. While it sounds like a lot of work, really what you will be doing is imagining the world you are trying to evoke and limiting some of your design decisions to options that best evoke that world. Most of what I write is just a detailed exploration of ways of imagining solutions to design problems. That's really what design is: imagining possibilities, curating ideas, and implementing the best ideas into the whole project. 

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