Why Role Reversal Works

(Yes, this is another post about Deadly Dowagers. Look, I've been kicking these ideas around for 2-4 years. Now that my game is out, please humor me. I promise to write about more general topics soon.)

I've been interested in role reversal as a literary device for a long time. In my undergrad directing class, I directed a scene (The Battle of Bull Run Always Makes Me Cry, 1995) in which I chose to gender flip all the roles. The scene was light fare (i.e. appropriate for an undergrad). Think David Ives, but less zany. The scene is about a woman recounting a date with a man to her female friends. It's trope-y (and fails the Bechdel test for what that's worth). So I explored those tropes through role reversal. 

At one point, one of my actors approached me to ask how gay I wanted them to play the scene. I didn't have the language then that I do now, but I tried my best to redirect the question. The characters weren't supposed to replace female tropes with gay tropes. I wanted them to play it straight—not in sexuality, but in earnestness. I was trying to explore the idea that sensitivity and vulnerability in relationships are not a single gender's issues. To be frank, this was around 2007 and I don't think my actors understood or believed me, but they toned down the acting style. 

You see, when we switch up roles it allows us to view our assumptions from a more critical angle. We can begin to question tropes and the status quo. We can refresh tired material or we can take risks. Sometimes we can do both at once. Of course, my undergrad directing class was pretty low stakes. Let's switch to board games. 

There are a lot of games with male murderers. Every Jack the Ripper themed game, for example. This is one way Deadly Dowagers explores role reversal, however it would be a mistake to think that this is the reason some people are uncomfortable with the theme. (It's the relationship between murderer and victim that is upsetting, which I address in the previous post.) 

The real role reversal I wanted to explore was that of turning powerful men into the game's resources. Women and minorities have long been resources or resource generating mechanics in Eurogames. There is one game in specific that I had in the back of my mind as I designed Deadly Dowagers, because it put women on the cover and in the title but relegated those characters to late game resources. (The game was not so successful that I feel comfortable calling it out by name, but it got attention from the major reviewers.)

You could argue that I reversed that scenario of minorities as resources in my game as a 'tit for tat' design flourish. But as discussed, role reversals exist to help us question our assumptions. The men functioning as resources are not a way of saying, "Oh yeah, two can play at that game!" but rather, "Is this ever ok? Either in real life or in games?" 

You may be now thinking, "If it's never ok, why did you put it in the game?" Because I believe that punching up is sometimes ok when you have a deeper message than just the punch. That is after all, the definition of satire. No message means you are being mean for no purpose. 

I've imagined every possible way you could tell the story in Deadly Dowagers. Men murdering their wives for their money does not work because it punches down. (There are other routes we could have gone that would have watered down the message by introducing other implications outside of the scope of the intended story.) The role reversal of giving power to the powerless is a strong storytelling tool because we can explore the positives and negatives of having power from a different angle than we usually encounter in the real world. 

Role reversals make you question your assumptions. If you aren't questioning your assumptions, either the message of the work was lost or there was no message to begin with.

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

Satire in Deadly Dowagers

I've mentioned before that women respond to Deadly Dowagers in a cathartic way and that this does to a certain extent undermine the intended satire. But I respect the experiences of women so I leaned into the catharsis instead of trying to be heavier-handed with the satire. I also know that author's intent doesn't really mean a whole lot compared to what messages the audience actually receive from the work. But because it only took a week for someone to wildly miss the point on BGG, I thought I'd share what I was actually trying to do in the game. 

The first iteration of Deadly Dowagers was "Inheritance," which explored how the aristocracy built wealth. The point then was to show that the nobility hadn't always been that way but came from somewhere. Not much of a message. 

When I pivoted to A Much Better ThemeTM, I committed to the players being the villains. I wanted the murder of the men to be a difficult decision emotionally because I wanted the game to be clear that the women are the baddies. Society is also to blame in the setting, for sure; that pressure is there and drives the decisions the women make. That is also intentional. The game is a meditation on what forces are at play when otherwise "good" people go bad. And lest you mistake my meaning, greed and ambition are the main driving forces, with societal forces following along behind. 

But what of the men? Do they deserve their fate? I only gave two art direction instructions to the publisher. One was to make sure the mills were water and not wind, because we committed to setting the game specifically in England. The other came after a question about whether the men should be boorish or evil looking. I nixed that hard. The men have to be neutral or the theme does not work. (The fact that this note seems to have spawned art that is best described as husband NFTs is endlessly amusing to me.) If the men deserve their fate, the satire is lost. If the men are too sympathetic, the catharsis is lost. The experience of the game hangs on the men's portraits. 

So what is the satire? I mention regularly that the theme is a metaphor, which most women take to mean that the husbands metaphorically stand in for all the men in their lives who have harmed them. And I don't want to take that catharsis from them. But the metaphor in the satire is that the men stand in for anyone who is dehumanized and harmed for the sake of someone else's profit. (Calling the game anti-capitalist would be much more accurate than misandrist.) By giving the men names and faces and a relationship to the player, the game is doubling down on the message that their fate is wrong; the whole system is wrong. 

But the solution is not for the women to be demur and return to their traditional roles. This is why the game is set in the Victorian era. If you only know one thing about the Victorian era, it is that women were highly repressed. So I rely on that outside knowledge to add tension to the theme. Because the systemic repression of women was wrong. But harming people for power and profit is also wrong. There is no right in this theme, except to learn and grow when the game is done. 

If the theme were played for laughs, or even for catharsis only, I wouldn't have allowed it to reach publication. Like if the Hunger Games trilogy were only a page-turner about kids killing each other and not a treatise on war and pacifism. I believe the message is what renders the content acceptable or unacceptable. Players engaging with the content on a surface level only was very much a concern during playtesting. Why I'm comfortable with the game being out in the wild is that players know, even when they can't explain why, that the theme was carefully crafted to be about something other than shock and awe. 

The musical Chicago isn't a celebration of murder, but an indictment of the American justice system and the media. But it's also fun and a bit silly at the same time. Anyone mature enough to play a game about serial murder is mature enough to handle that a theme can be both irreverent and serious. 

This is my defense for Deadly Dowagers. I don't expect author's intent to carry much weight. But maybe it is helpful to know there was an intent. 

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

Knitting Agency into Theme

Sometimes perfect pairings are discovered that change the way you think about the individual elements. Take for example noodles and tomatoes, which originated in China and South America respectively, but which in combination are associated with Italy. In this post, I want to talk about another synergistic pairing.

There are two common uses of the term agency, when referring to the ability to choose which action to take. One is in gaming, particularly board games: "Does the player have enough agency?" This idea is central to the book Games: Agency as Art, which posits that the curated agencies of games are a unique art form. 

The other, of course, arises from what might be described as feminist film discourse: "Do the female characters in that movie have agency?" 

I've said previously that the reason why Deadly Dowagers resonates with women is because it is a female power fantasy. I still believe this to be the case. However, a more nuanced take would also include the fact that not only is the theme knitted to the mechanics, but the both the theme and the mechanics are an exploration of agency. 

The rules of Deadly Dowagers aren't quite what gamers expect when they sit down to play. There are restrictions that you don't find in other tableau builders. For example, there is not an income phase every round. Rules explanations, in my experience, are often accompanied by the addendum "because you're a woman, that's why." (People who grew up adhering to similar gendered expectations tend to not bat an eye at the restrictions because they are familiar with how this world works.) 

Of course, even in a restrictive society it is possible to have some agency. And restrictive games usually have more meaningful choices than purely luck-based games. Games like Obsession use this synergy to convey "how society was back then" but don't actually engage with the extreme inequities baked into the society in question. Inequities like how a woman's property legally belonged to her husband when they got married. 

I had many, many playtesters ask me why Deadly Dowagers didn't have balls, shopping, or courtship, i.e. the feminine pursuits associated with "the era."* But stripping out the expected trappings allowed me to laser focus on the important thematic choices in the game. As well as allowing me to explore what it actually feels like to be a woman in a world that grants you little agency. The point is not to feel feminine but restricted and a little unsettled. Heading Forward is an example of a more serious implementation of this idea of limited agency leveraged to emphasize the theme, in this case recovering from a brain injury.

Games have limited agencies, which is what makes them both frustrating and fun to play. Those limitations and frustrations can be used to represent other times in history when a group of people faced limited agencies. We don't have to only theme Euro games around successful inventors and entrepreneurs. 

It turns out pairing the artistic medium of agency with the theme of agency works really well. I think there is design space here to develop much stronger thematic experiences by leveraging the player experience of making challenging or difficult choices. 

*Deadly Dowagers is set in the mid-to-late Victorian era. Obsession claims to be set in the Victorian era but has strong Regency sensibilities. Pride and Prejudice and Bridgerton are Regency era settings. Downton Abbey is Edwardian and post-Edwardian. Yes, the difference matters thematically. 

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

Happy International Women's Day

I'm interrupting my regular Monday release schedule to announce that Deadly Dowagers is for sale as of today, International Women's Day '23. Deadly Dowagers was produced by a woman-led, all women team. 

I expect to have more posts specific to the game in the future (but keeping a focus on design theory), but, for now, you can buy the game here if the fancy strikes you. Or not. You do you. 

Exemplars of Theme

I don't have a top ten thematic games. Instead, I have a list of ten games that showcase different traits that I've written about before. I think that playing these games or the honorable mentions with attention to the traits I discuss here will drive home the different ways a game can be thematic. I'm not diving deep into how each game works here, because if you are unfamiliar with any of these games I think you should give them a look with an eye to how the theme is implemented. 

King of Tokyo

Standout trait: Clear distinction between the agential mechanisms of rerolling and locking and VP set collection and the thematic mechanisms (all the other ones). 

Additional traits: Strong thematic/mechanic hook, which I describe as combat Yahtzee with kaiju. This combination of familiar and unexpected elements makes it easy to pitch to non-gamers. 

Evokes genre. Other games evoke genre better, but few do as much with as few mechanisms. 

Honorable Mention: Betrayal at Mystery Mansion exhibits all of the above traits but may be more group dependent. 

Tokaido

Standout trait: Evocative actions. There are no agential mechanisms (or icons) once the game starts. 

Additional trait: Pairs an abstracted time track with the theme of a road in a way that really works. This shows that games can have some abstraction and still have the net result be thematic. 

Super-Skill Pinball 

Standout trait: Mechanically simulates theme.  Does so across multiple boards showcasing the diversity of pinball tables. 

Additional traits: Proves theme can be mathy and R&Ws can be thematic. 

One of the best examples of player as avatar, in that the avatar is the person playing pinball and you are the person playing the simulation of pinball. 

Sheriff of Nottingham

Standout trait: Mechanics that require above the table thematic interactions that are also literal actions, i.e. bluffing and negotiation. 

Additional trait: Avatar embodiment married to above the table actions encourages role play without requiring it. 

Honorable Mentions: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes does the above but isn't generally considered a board game. The Grizzled does the above without the literal actions. 

Everdell

Standout trait: Evocative tableau/engine building through cards that build, populate, and (in some cases) operate a town. 

Additional traits: Thematic quests/achievements that use certain card pairings to evoke narrative concepts. 

Evocative resources that are thematic to the setting but also thematic in the materials used to produce the bits. 

A Fistful of Meeples 

Standout trait: Workers/meeples that have goals that are in conflict with other meeples. Each type wants to be around certain other types and not others. These relationships make the setting feel more alive and lived in than most meeple-centric games. 

Additional traits: Evokes genre. 

Example of a thematic game with no player avatar. 

The Coldest Night

Standout trait: A strong and deeply evocative sense of setting that flows from a short description of the theme to the simple mechanisms that capitalize on the emotion of desperation and leave the players' imaginations to do the rest. The player as avatar helps drive that feeling of desperation by minimizing the distance between character and player. 

Honorable Mention: Sushi Roll creates a clear sense of setting with very simple and clever component and mechanic design. 

Root

Standout trait: An emergent sense of world history based on how the factions work and relate to each other. 

Additional trait: Naming conventions and art hint at and reinforce the power dynamics between the factions, such as the Woodland Alliance (mice) and the Cats which build sawmills. 

Ex Libris

Standout trait: Harnesses players' intrinsic motivation for order and gives game world logic to it. 

Additional trait: Applies that intrinsic motivation to the job of the player avatar to create character motivation. 

Honorable Mention: Deadly Dowagers pits the intrinsic desires for power and status against the desires for honor and family to create tension within the players as a part of the gameplay experience. 

Cosmic Frog

Standout trait: Excellent example of a fantastical setting (using the art world definition of fantasy) that also shows the extreme edges of how game world logic can be used to reinforce rules. 

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