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.