World Building in A Fistful of Meeples

I've been looking at methods for world building recently on this blog (most notably here and here), and today I want to spend some time looking at (yet another) example of a game that does it well. I recently acquired A Fistful of Meeples because I really like the mechanisms. But what impressed me after playing the game was the world building. 

There is no lore fluff in this game. Our sense of this world comes from the components, the mechanisms, and the illustration. The game takes itself seriously by eschewing jokey flavor text but not so seriously that I am asked to read a background novella. I love this. I am asked to simply accept the premise of the game on its face, and I do. The reason I can, however, is because everything else about the game works together to build the world. 

The board takes the basic shape of a mancala board and overlays it atop the main street of an old west town. The movement of the meeples as a part of the main mechanic feels like the flow of a group of people who all have multiple errands to run. All of the actions make sense and are thematic. There is some dissonance between active and inactive meeples, such as when a robber steals from a miner in a store that also has a deputy in it. But I believe in this world so much that I just accept that that's the way things work in the "Meeple Old West."

All of the characters are defined by what they want. Robbers want to steal. Deputies want to catch robbers. Builders want to improve the town. Miners want to buy supplies (or that's how I interpret it, anyway). These characters interact with one another mechanically but in such a way as to make their relationships clear. It's a simple view, but we are talking about a one street town. 

One of the things that makes the world work so well for me is that the meeples are not symbolic representations of human characters. The characters are meeples. The art is very clear on that point. I don't think that's the right choice for every game world, but I find it so easy to suspend disbelief in A Fistful of Meeples. The world feels incredibly consistent because the iconography and what it represents are so similar. The icon of a meeple represents a meeple. The board is the town. 

In some ways, this game reminds me of the beginning of The Lego Movie—a realistic view of a city portrayed through the medium of toys. But this game (like many games) is also reminiscent of The Sims. The players in A Fistful of Meeples are gods dictating the lives and paths of the characters. But players are also seemingly investors building up business empires in this small town. This is the only aspect of the game I wish were better explained. Who are we when we play? Why do robbers give us loot but also deputies? Is this town corrupted by corporate interests? In some ways I prefer playing as a god because the other interpretation takes the straightforward character agendas and muddies them. In the end, getting resources and points feels mechanical; it has to be there to be a game. But that feeling occurs entirely off the board, outside of the city and as a result only does minor damage to my buy-in of the world. World building in non-narrative board games is always going to be a little messy. While I wish this game meshed player gains with meeple actions in a way that made more sense, I still love how much world building there is in a small-box, 45 minute game. 

It's rare for me to play a game so grounded in a single place with such clear character goals. A Fistful of Meeples doesn't sacrifice concise, tight mechanics for theme, but instead leverages its mechanics to make the theme come alive. I love it. There is, however, one more odd moment in the game created by the one character I haven't talked about. In next week's post, I'm going to discuss the Madame. 

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