Inciting Incidents

One of the most common pieces of design advice is to start the game when the turns get interesting. This is similar to the narrative concept of starting a story in medias res—in the middle of the action. If a game should begin mechanically when things get interesting, it only follows that the theme should as well. A well-knitted theme should begin with the same intensity as the mechanics. 

That doesn't mean that we can't have any exposition, however. The introductory paragraph in the rulebook gives us a chance to tell players what they are doing and why they are doing it. In general, rulebook lore is most effective when it gives context to gameplay. The entire history of your world is not only unnecessary but can be detrimental to the goal of giving players context for their actions. In other words, too much lore is as bad, or worse, than no lore. 

There are many ways of incorporating lore in rulebooks that will enhance player experiences, but I want to (again) focus on the introductory paragraph. Specifically, I want to look at one method for introductory paragraphs that meshes well with the game design advice described above: using inciting incidents. If we want games to start with rising action, one way to jump directly into the action on turn one is to have an inciting incident described in the rulebook. (Another way is to have the inciting incident occur during setup.) 

An inciting incident is the event at the beginning of a story that sets the main characters on the path that becomes the rest of the story. What caused the player characters to act in this way? Why are they in opposition (or cooperation) with the other characters? Ideally, you can also use the inciting incident to explain why the main characters want what they want. 

This is an especially good way to use snippets of fiction. Instead of an unconnected short story, an inciting incident scene at the beginning of the rulebook can propel players into the action of the game. The main caveat here is that the inciting incident should be about the characters that are in the game, not other characters in your lore and the incident should lead directly into the action of the game. The players won't be propelled into the action of the game if the lore does not directly apply to them and what they're doing. 

Inciting incidents are not the main action of the game, merely what sparks the action. As such, you really shouldn't need more that a couple paragraphs at most to set up the action of the game. Best case scenario, the player that reads the rulebook internalizes the reason for the action of the game and the motivation of the characters and relays all of that to the other players. In order for players to internalize the why of the action, the lore needs to be brief and to the point. Much in the same way that the theme provides logic for the mechanics, the introductory lore of the game should set up the logic of the theme. 

A pretty good example is So, You've Been Eaten. The title itself serves as exposition, providing the setting and tone of the game. The lore is styled as training propaganda for the employee character who mines the worms. This tells us who we are and why we are doing the actions in the game. The main thing we don't learn is why we would have signed up for this job to begin with. 

Inciting incidents can help us frame the narrative by showing what sparked the events of a game. By placing inciting incidents in the rulebook (or setup), we free up our games to start at the point when the action really gets going. Focusing introductory rulebook lore on inciting incidents keeps the lore focused on the action and motivation of the player characters. 

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