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.