Theming Player Strategies

In the past couple of posts, I have discussed actions and structures in games and how to think about designing them thematically. You may want to read those posts first. In this post, I'm going to talk about incorporating player strategies into your theme. Shoutout to my omni-gamer husband (and several friends) who helped me come up with this list of strategies. 

Player strategies are emergent styles of gameplay that ideally lead to having a shot at winning the game. Games consist of goals and obstacles, and strategies are how players attempt to overcome obstacles to reach a goal. Stories are also made up of goals and obstacles and characters who strive with them. Notably, in acting the term tactics is used to describe the ways an actor relates to goals and obstacles within a scene. So it makes sense when designing a thematic game to consider the mechanical strategies as thematic opportunities. Probably the easiest way to handle theming strategies is to design different player powers that lean into different strategies and give each power a specific character who has a motivation for behaving that way. Another way would be to have thematic endgame achievements for employing certain strategies. When playtesting, observe the types of strategies used and see if you can develop in-world reasons for characters behaving that way. To help you on your way, I have compiled a list of player strategies (and a few tactics) that you might encounter or purposely design into your game. I've tried to focus on non-degenerate strategies, although some of these are borderline depending on how they interact with your specific design. I've tried to group similar things together and have had to invent a number of names. Let me know if there are common strategy names I have missed. I've grouped the strategies into optimization, misdirection, defense, and timing categories. For other ways to shape character/player motivation and strategy, read this article from Games Precipice. 

• Optimization strategies break into two overall types: positive and negative. Most games have at least one type of optimization strategy. 

Positive Optimization is getting the highest possible value from each of your turns. Often games that encourage positive optimization won't contain other viable strategies. And when there are other strategies they can feel out of place, like take that in a resource management game. Examples of positive optimization include drawing extra cards, maximizing resource production, selling high, and timing payouts to buy low. Positive optimization is usually found in efficiency puzzles or cycles. Themes that blend well with positive optimization include almost any type of technology or production, including farming. 

Negative Optimization is the strategy of reducing the scope your opponent's options for their turn. Both positive and negative optimization are a form of 'action economy,' a term I learned from Matt Colville's YouTube channel. Colville uses action economy to describe combat balance in Dungeons and Dragons, which dovetails nicely with negative optimization. This isn't merely a 'take that' strategy. Rather this strategy is mostly found in PvP or PvE games, where you can kill/damage/capture something that your opponent uses to generate actions. The simplest example is a squad-based skirmish game, where if you kill off some of the opposing forces, their options become more limited on their turn. However, casting a slow spell or imposing some other condition has a similar effect of worsening the action economy of your opponent. A scorched earth strategy would be an extreme form of negative optimization. Negative optimization is almost exclusively found in open conflict games, although Citadels is a covert conflict game that has two roles in the base game that negatively impact other players' action economies. Themes should be amenable to conflict; in the case of Citadels the negative optimization roles are assassin and thief, which are thematically appropriate. 

The following strategies are subtypes of positive and/or negative optimization strategies. 

Raising the Floor is a type of positive optimization that involves improving your base economy or statistics. This strategy centers improvement and long term goals over short term gains. An example is moving up the income track in Space Base. Themes for raising the floor could be economic in nature or emphasize mechanical or physical improvements (like going to the gym to raise your strength score). 

Specialization is focusing on a single path within a game. It is often a style of positive optimization, but sometimes players may want to specialize for reasons other than optimization (especially in games where specialization isn't the best path to victory). This strategy could also be negative optimization if used to cut other players off from a type of resource. Specialization allows players to identify with their character's career, such as 'pig farmer' or 'cloth merchant.' Roles, objectives, or achievements can further allow players to invest in their character's business successes (or failures). 

'A Boat in Every Port' is optimization by way of spreading out your forces. This is the opposite of specialization. While most likely positive optimization, it could be a negative optimization strategy by taking resources or opportunities before your opponents can. Rarely will spreading out result in total dominance, rather this approach often gets rewarded when coming in second enough times allows for a cumulative first place finish, for example in Pandemic: Contagion. This strategy may also put pressure on other players to go after opportunities before they planned, which could put them off balance.  Business related themes (like market penetration) work well here, as do more abstract concepts like viral spread (of either kind of virus). 

Denial is a form of negative optimization built around neutralizing your opponents powers. This strategy takes its name from Magic: The Gathering. Counterspell, take that mechanics, and blocking are all forms of denial. Themes can emphasize defensiveness or battlefield control powers for characters that make use of denial strategies. 

• Misdirection strategies seek to signal to your opponent that you aren't a threat and can be safely ignored. Games with covert conflict benefit from misdirection strategies. 

'Keep Your Head Down' is a strategy of quietly earning points or completing objectives in such a way that no one notices when you take the lead. While this can manifest as players being physically quiet, mechanically it can look like un-flashy play styles and gradual progress. This strategy is often seen in games with open conflict but alternate win conditions. In King of Tokyo, the player who goes after victory points rather than damage can sometimes eke out a surprise victory if other players aren't paying attention. However, like in King of Tokyo, going for gradual points may be the least thematic part of a design. While it would make the tone of the game darker, the rolling for victory points strategy in King of Tokyo could have been themed around eating bystanders: the more you eat, the more points you get. While this strategy crops up in other styles and structures of games, it's more likely to be an 'above the table' strategy of keeping quiet if there isn't an alternate win condition involved. 'Keep your head down' blends well with diplomatic or pacifist themes when in conflict games. 

Intentional Underdog is a strategy of hanging back behind the leader. This could be to take advantage of catch-up mechanics or to avoid getting ganged up on by other players. Intentional underdog is distinct from 'keep your head down,' because 'keep your head down' is about getting ahead while no one notices, but intentional underdog is about artificially putting on the brakes to stay out of the lead. Theming your catch-up mechanics and placement bonuses and penalties could give players in-character reasons for employing this strategy.  

Sandbagging is when a player hoards resources only to convert them into points at the last possible moment. When a player sandbags, their true standing in the game is obscured for most of the game. In this strategy the player is never truly behind, but appears so. Sandbagging is more common in resource management games while intentional underdog is more common in conflict games, but there is a certain amount of overlap. Sandbagging may be undesirable in a game, in which case limits can be placed on the amount of resources that can be hoarded. But if the strategy is desirable, themes of stockpiling, hoarding, or misers (or dragons) would be appropriate. 

Social Leveraging is a meta-strategy of convincing your opponents that you aren't a threat through persuasion, cajoling, pleading, etc. The meta-strategy of not drawing attention to yourself in 'keep your head down' falls into social leveraging. Mechanics such as bluffing, negotiation, and trading require players to employ a certain amount of social leveraging. Social leveraging benefits from themes where characters have in-world reasons to talk to one another. 

• Defense strategies are about protecting yourself and your possessions. While negative optimization focuses on slowing your opponent, defensive strategies focus on dealing with hindrances and penalties that come your way. 

Turtling focuses on defensive measures at the expense of everything else. This can end up looking very similar to sandbagging, except that turtling is fairly exclusive to open conflict games. If this strategy is desirable, you could theme a faction around paranoid isolation or a history of getting invaded. 

Weatherproofing is the strategy of always having enough resources to cover possible penalties on top of what you need for regular gameplay. (This strategy could also be called 'feeding your family' after the mechanic in Agricola.) Weatherproofing is usually less extreme than sandbagging and has a different motivation. Themes could emphasize a character's foresight, prudence, wisdom, or even community care. 

Taking the Hit is the opposite of weatherproofing. (You could think of it as 'starving your family.') This strategy could be employed in resource games with penalties or in open conflict games. In covert conflict games you could 'take one for the team' by getting eliminated to draw suspicion off of another team member. Themes could emphasize a character's willingness to sacrifice or toughness or fearlessness. 

Cutting Your Losses focuses on retreating from a battle so as not to lose the war. This strategy is found in open conflict games, but also in games with betting, push your luck, or market investments. Themes could emphasize a character's business savvy, strategic brilliance, or inability to stay the course. 

• Timing strategies and tactics are about choosing your moment or window in order to succeed. Timing strategies are so in the moment and often brief that you could also consider them tactics. 

Rushing the Objective focuses on achieving a goal before your opponents have time to fully power up. It is the opposite of sandbagging. This strategy undercuts attempts at optimization but is risky because there is usually a narrow window before a game ramps up. This strategy can be deployed in any sort of point scoring game where players control when the game ends. It can also be found in open conflict games where a player may attempt to wipe out all other players before more advanced units can be unlocked. Rushing could lead to specialization where a player has a monopoly on a resource. Themes could emphasize hastiness or greed. 

'No, After You' is a delaying tactic that attempts to force one of your opponents to take the undesirable choice. This is the strategy that occurs late in every round of Azul. This strategy also occurs in competitive games with global threats where all players could lose. Themes could emphasize cooperation/selfishness, market forces, or the downsides of pioneering/innovation. 

Hail Mary is a tactic of attempting to pull out a victory from the jaws of defeat. This tactic can help players feel like they still have a chance at winning, but if it succeeds too often games will feel overly random. If you have a deus ex machina card in your game, try to tie it into your theme. (Imagine, for example, if the 'You Win' card in Space Base had a theme.) 

If the actions of a game constitute the plot elements, then player strategies are how the story gets told. A fully integrated theme will take into account how the game is played and not just what comes in the box. So much of the experience of playing a game comes from deploying different strategies. It just makes sense to consider those strategies when designing your theme. 

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

Theming Game Structures

Different mechanical game structures lend themselves to different types of stories. There is a reason that most dungeon crawlers look and feel similar. Understanding how high level structure impacts storytelling can help you design themes that feel organic to the game. In this post I outline six categories, but those categories can be combined in different ways to produce distinct, interesting games. I divide these categories less on how mechanically distinct they are from one another and more on how they feel and what types of themes fit well with them (especially when looking at the first two). Any themes and mechanisms listed are just common ones to get you started and should not limit you from exploring other ideas that might fit with the experience of play. 

1. Solving a Puzzle

This category could potentially be divided into two categories: puzzles with a set of single answers and efficiency puzzles that could have multiple right answers. I've lumped them together because I find that figuring out the best answer feels similar across multiple genres (when you control for the emotional experience of the theme). Single solution puzzle structure encompasses logic puzzles, deduction, code-breaking, and other terms that are basically synonyms. Efficiency puzzle structures includes bingo-style mechanisms and time/resource management. These two substructures can be frequently found in the same game. Puzzle-solving structures lend themselves to mystery stories, detective stories, and horror stories, but also stories about hackers, cryptographers, and code-breakers. Efficiency puzzles are frequently structured around expanding power and options, diminishing choices, or sometimes both. Try to match your theme to the dynamics present in the puzzle. Stories about players trying to survive/outlast what the game throws at them could lean into either substructure or both. Themes that don't benefit from a feeling of 'running out of time' will fail to tap into the full potential of puzzle-solving structures. 

2. Cycles

On the surface, cyclical structures can look a lot like efficiency puzzles, but I think they lend themselves to very different stories. Cyclical structures contain repeating events that lead into one another. Cyclical structures rely heavily on timing, but in a vastly different way from puzzle-solving structures. Cycles demand that you tactically take advantage of certain game states at just the right moment, but may not lead to the 'running out of time' feeling of puzzle-solving structures. Because events will recur again and again, cyclical games feel less hurried and pressured. However, they still require an emphasis on efficiency to play well. Traits of cyclical structures include intermittent scoring, multiple phases, set collection, and engine building. Cycles may be player dependent like the seasons in Everdell or they may be global like the ages in 7 Wonders. Keep in mind that a game could be an efficiency puzzle and cyclical. I wouldn't describe a game with two distinctly different halves as cyclical, although either or both halves could be cyclical. Cyclical structure lends itself to themes such as natural systems (like life cycles or weather), industrial systems, generational storytelling, and cooking. Any theme that lends itself to templates or formulas (especially if a character might do it multiple times in a row) works well in a cyclical game. I have a prototype about writing songs that includes set collection and intermittent scoring where timing concerns and limited resources give the experience of trying to creatively write on a deadline. Cyclical structures may be my favorite to design in. 

3. Race to Finish

'First past the post' can refer to victory conditions or to other goals within a game (or cycle/phase). This structure focuses on rewarding the player (or NPC) who meets a requirement first. Alternatively, race to finish structures can be used to qualify players for scoring, a form of endgame player elimination. Race to finish structures can be a layer added to other structures to increase the tension of gameplay. On its own, this structure often utilizes more randomness than other structures (except open conflict). Race to finish mechanics include dice-rolling, betting, ladder climbing, headwinds/tailwinds, and pawn movement mechanics. Themes that mesh well include competitions or contests, which of course includes actual races. If a theme emphasizes speed, race to finish is a good go-to structure. Cooperative games may have a race to finish oriented around a race against time or against the game AI. For a much more detailed examination of this structure, read this post from Games Precipice about late game structures. I should note that race to finish is either about the whole of the game or a goal within the game, whereas 'go the fastest' in the linked post is about the endgame state. One hallmark of race to finish games is that the momentum of the game is strongly focused on the objective/win condition.

4. Race to Fill

Race to fill structure is a race to expand or exploit. This structure pairs well with other structures that emphasize efficiency. Race to fill differs from race to finish in that the player who gets somewhere first may not be the winner but rather the player who does the most (similar to 'go the farthest' in the above linked post). This structure includes mechanisms such as area control, area majority, tile laying, city building, and set collection. Race to fill games create tension through scarcity of resources/space. Pick-up and deliver games can combine race to fill with race to finish and/or cyclical structure. Race to fill is often cyclical, but the addition of race to fill adds tension to cyclical games. Common themes in this structure include city planning, forest planting, territory conquest, exploration, and order fulfillment (such as a short order cook). 

5. Open Conflict 

Open conflict structures center on players giving and receiving damage from other players and/or the game. These are pretty much always fighting games although damage could be to anything, not just health. The defining aspect of open conflict is that objectives and sides are known by all players; damage is not done in secret. Open conflict games often have player elimination, alliances, and leveling up mechanics. Most 'take that' mechanics are forms of open conflict. Common themes are war, survival, and adventuring (or 'murder hobos' if you will). Open conflict can be cyclical, especially when using leveling up mechanisms. The danger of having open conflict as only one aspect of the game is that it will often feel like a separate mini game that interrupts the flow of the overall game. 

6. Covert Conflict

Covert conflict structures involve secrets: secret objectives or roles or teams or some combination of the above. Covert conflict also has player elimination, but often via vote instead of damage. In addition to player elimination and voting, common mechanisms include negotiation, bluffing, trading/deal-making, deduction, hidden movement, and traitors. Covert conflict games often fall in the party game adjacent category (social deduction, etc), but there have been larger games with an emphasis on covert conflict. Larger/heavier games are likely to combine covert conflict with other structures, especially open conflict. Bang! is an example of blended open and covert conflict. Themes commonly paired with covert conflict are spies and diplomats. Covert conflict usually contains a high social factor in gameplay, as a result the well-integrated themes of such games usually center on who the characters are and their interactions both mechanically and thematically. 

7. Special Hybrids: Pivot Points

Sometimes games have two distinct halves or phases, such as Bosk. These halves may have different structures, but the game controls when they occur. Other times, games have player-controlled pivots. Pivot points allow a game arc to have a distinct rising-action-pivot-falling-action arc. There are two very common pivot point structures: Grab the Treasure and Run and Reaping What You Sow. In 'grab the treasure and run,' the rising action is acquiring as many point scoring items as possible (usually an efficiency puzzle). After the pivot, players must move as quickly as possible to the zone that will allow them to score their loot (race to finish). These games usually center push your luck mechanics. In 'reaping what you sow,' the rising action is building up resources or an engine and the falling action is cashing in on your hard work. Deck builders and other engine building mechanics employ this type of pivot. Classic examples of these substructures are Clank! and Dominion. Done well, pivot points can make the story of a game come alive because their structure closely resembles narrative structure. Even when not well-integrated with theme, pivot points add excitement to gameplay.

Mechanisms suggest themes by their rhythm and structure and ability to create tension/excitement. Mechanisms also tend to gravitate to certain game structures. Themes might feel pasted-on if they aren't a good match for the game structure. There is a reason player elimination feels wrong in a multi-player solitaire style game. Analyze the games you have designed. What structures did you use? What structure are you drawn to most? I avoid open conflict, as a rule. I tend to design in the same structures as the games I enjoy playing. Because I enjoy designing cyclical games (which I think is the coziest structure), I tend to brainstorm game ideas around themes that employ templates, like cooking. When starting a new design, you could brainstorm by combining two structures then looking at what themes and mechanisms would work well together within those structures. 

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

Thematic Actions

Mechanisms are units of play that have widely varying sizes. A mechanism may be a piece of an action or may be a way of describing the entire flow of a game. For instance, 'engine building' is descriptive of how a game is structured; you can't determine if an unfamiliar game is an engine builder by looking at only one action. For this reason, I often talk about actions instead of mechanisms. Actions are more uniform in length and usually involve the player doing a single thing. When working on theming a game, thematic actions are an easier place to start than thematic mechanisms. Many mechanisms—deck building, drafting, etc.—are difficult to tie into a theme. You can match the experiences/emotions of the theme with those mechanisms to create a more unified experience, but in this post I'm going to be looking at types actions so that we can better understand how theme presents at a gameplay level. I have identified five types of actions in board games: mechanical, associated, metaphoric, simulative, and literal. 

Mechanical actions are the unthemed actions of a game. Almost every game will have some of these. Examples include drawing a card or scoring a victory point. In a themed game, these actions are necessary to the function of play but should recede to the background as much as possible. 

Associated actions reinforce the logic of the theme but do not relate mechanically or experientially to the theme. In other words, associated actions are labeled thematically and that's where the theme ends. Let's imagine a game with actions themed around kicking a ball into a goal. An action that moves a cube to indicate whether or not you have kicked yet would be an associated action. The action is associated with the theme (kicking) but only very tangentially. Just like mechanical actions, some associated actions may be necessary for the function of play. 

The next three action types fall under the umbrella of evocative actions. They evoke the theme of the game. Thematic experiences rely largely on evocative actions. However, you have options in how you choose to evoke your theme. 

Metaphoric actions evoke similar experiences, emotions, or idioms as the theme. This category of action (and this whole system as a result) was inspired by Geoff Engelstein discussing how he views theme as presenting as a metaphor in gameplay. In our ball kicking game, rolling a die and succeeding in scoring a goal on a high number would be a metaphoric action. The experience of a successful role mimics the experience of a successful kick, but does not simulate physical kicking. Metaphoric actions may act as emotional simulations. They can also use idioms, such as our correlation of high rolls with success. 

Simulative actions simulate physical aspects of the theme. There are many types of simulations, but for our purposes simulative actions mimic real world physical events. The action does not (or not just) mirror the emotions of the theme, but the physical action imagined by the theme. Flicking a disc onto a circle simulates kicking a ball in a way that rolling a die does not (unless you are rolling the die toward a goal). There are going to be cases where you could argue either way over what is simulative and what is metaphoric (or even how I define the difference), and that's fine. These categories are to help expand our understanding of what theme is and how is presents in gameplay. 

Literal actions are an actual performance of the theme by the players. Literal actions are one step beyond simulative. A literal action would be kicking a ball. In MonsDRAWsity, players are police sketch artists thematically. In the game they literally produce sketches based on descriptions provided by a 'witness.' If the theme of a game were to be 'playing a game' then all mechanical actions would be literal actions. 

Most games have a mixture of action types. I think the most important distinction is understanding the difference between associated actions and the evocative action umbrella. A game that is mostly made up of associated actions will feel themeless to players. A well-knitted theme should have a healthy dose of evocative actions. Evocative actions can do a lot of the heavy-lifting of world building from the inside out. 

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

Knitted vs. Layered Themes

In the last two posts, I have mentioned that an art style is not enough to qualify as a game's theme. There must be at least one connection point to the mechanics. In this post, I want to look at the spectrum of connectivity between theme and mechanics. 

The term "pasted on theme" is largely derogatory, although it's used frequently for otherwise well respected games. I would like to propose two terms to replace it, knitted and layered. Layered themes are developed separately from mechanics then 'layered' on top of them. Layered is the direct replacement of pasted on, but hopefully lacks the derogatory tone. A layered theme has connection points to the mechanics, but they often feel inorganic. The emotional experiences of the theme and the mechanics may feel like two separate experiences. This can be seen with games that completely develop mechanics before finding a theme, but could also found in games with a completed theme that has mechanics layered on top of it, such as IP games often found in the mass market. Or the designer could simply develop both in parallel without much concern for how they intersect. 

Layered themes will often have some baked-in thematic elements (such as resource tokens) and some lore fluff, but will usually not have mechanisms that match the experience of the theme. Action names will be a mixture of thematic actions and mechanical actions. Often the layout of the board will lack any connection to the theme. The experience of play will rely heavily on the mechanics, sometimes feeling out of step with the theme. A layered theme is still a theme, but players may describe the game as "not thematic." Layered themes are not inherently bad, but should be designed and presented intentionally so as not to give players the impression that they will have a type of thematic experience that is not actually present in the game. Love Letter is an example of a layered theme. 

A knitted theme has many connection points between theme and mechanics. Knitted themes are more likely to have been developed simultaneously alongside the mechanics of a game.  A knitted theme will be difficult to retheme without changing at least a few mechanics. Knitted themes present a more unified experience. However, knitted themes may not be immersive/transportive. Mechanic-thematic integration revolves around how well/often the mechanics and theme are connected, not around the type of experience that provides. A transportive game may be immersive because of the narrative but have layered mechanics or a 'loosely' knitted theme where only some of the mechanics are knitted but some are not. Indeed, many Ameritrash-style games could be categorized as loosely knit, with the bulk of the theme coming from illustration, narrative, or the player's prior knowledge of the IP. 

Whether or not a game has a tightly knitted theme may be somewhat subjective. The mechanics need to be largely motivated by the theme and provide a similar emotional experience as the theme. These terms aren't meant to judge how accurately the mechanics simulate the theme, merely the interconnectedness of theme and mechanics. Any immersion or simulation or aligned emotional experience may be the result of a tightly knitted theme but knitted themes lend themselves to many different sorts of play experiences, including euro games. Examples of knitted themes include Guillotine and Everdell. 

Theme in board games is expressed in many different ways and to different degrees. Hopefully adding terms like knitted and layered can help designers think about how they express theme in their own designs. 

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