TBM: Ep 1 script

In an attempt to transition out of hiatus, I will be posting the scripts of my Thinking Beyond Mechanisms segment. I don't plan to edit them, so there may be some differences between the audio and written versions. Take the audio as the correct version. I also plan on offering some additional thoughts in separate posts—commentary on the episodes, if you will.

Beyond Theme Versus Mechanics

Welcome to Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, an in depth look at some of the other aspects of game design. My name is Sarah Shipp and I want to use this segment to look at some of the theory of board game design that goes beyond what typically gets covered when we start learning how to design games. Why is it important to learn more theory if you already have a good grasp of mechanical design? A lot of how we design is affected by how we think. When we learn new ways of thinking about design, our design process is affected. 

If you have ever taken a drawing class, you might have started with drawing exercises that focus on how you see an object and lessons on how to perceive that object for the purposes of drawing it. A lot of learning to draw is learning new ways of thinking about what we see. You’re unlikely to advance very far in life drawing without these lessons. 

There are similar lessons to learn in board game design. Unfortunately, very little published board game design theory exists outside of mechanics and math. I’ve spent the past several years reading and writing about board game design theory, and I’d like to share some of the things I’ve discovered. While I sometimes drift into the philosophical, my goal is to outline ways of thinking about game design that are useful to designers. 

My particular area of focus recently has been around theme and the integration of theme into mechanics. Today I want to talk about the most common question in game design: theme first or mechanics first. I’ll explain why I think this is a false dichotomy and what I think is a more helpful way to think about theme when designing games. 

I see a lot of designers who create a whole fantasy world, then search for ways to gameify it. Even more often, there are designers who design whole games before looking for a theme to add to it. And of course there are designers who develop theme and mechanics concurrently. I am an advocate of doing whichever method works for you. 

But I think that regardless of your approach, there are ways to think about theme and mechanics that can improve your skill as a designer. The question becomes then not theme first or mechanics first but how does theme interact with mechanics to produce the gameplay experience? 

As the saying goes, the medium is the message. And in board games, I am increasingly convinced that the mechanisms are the theme. Or rather, that through play the mechanisms create the theme. Or perhaps I should say A theme, call it the mechanical theme. There is also a second, often unrelated, theme added into the game in the form of art and text, which I’ll call the explicit theme, since it’s the answer to the question “what is the theme in this game?” 

When these two themes- the mechanical theme and the explicit theme- create clashing experiences, the game is said to have ludonarrative dissonance- dissonance between the game and the story or theme. Even if a game doesn’t feel dissonant, when the explicit and mechanical themes do not line up, players will usually describe the game as abstract and the theme as pasted on. 

Take Love Letter, for example. The explicit theme of Love Letter involves courtiers attempting to deliver letters to the Princess. The mechanical theme is best described as a covert struggle to identify and eliminate your competition. There is very little overlap between the two themes. As a result, Love Letter is not considered a particularly thematic game. However, when these two themes perfectly overlap, a game is said to be highly thematic. 

Let’s back up a bit. How can mechanisms create theme? Well, clearly certain mechanisms are inherently thematic. Look at various combat mechanics, such as taking damage after a hit, or pick-up-and-deliver. How many games use pick-up-and-deliver in an unthematic way? It’s almost impossible. Likewise, worker placement carries a certain inherent thematic quality. 

What about mechanisms with inherently abstract qualities? Specifically, drawing cards, shuffling, dice rolling, etc. In thematic games there are two experiential states: one of the thematic game world and one of the mechanical game state. Most games require at least some mechanisms to be purely mechanical in order for the game to flow smoothly and operate like a game. These mechanisms are not usually the central mechanisms however. 

When I say that the mechanisms are the theme, I am talking about the mechanisms central to the game experience. If the central mechanisms are inherently abstract the designer will have a harder job creating a thematic game. For example, the abstraction of dice rolling as a central mechanism is very difficult to overcome unless there are sufficient supporting mechanisms that can draw players into the world of the game. King of Tokyo manages to overcome the abstraction of the dice but many roll & writes do not. 

Many designers use theme as window dressing. I believe this limits the types of gameplay experiences they can create. Instead, if designers understand the nuanced relationship between mechanics and theme, they can craft game narratives that are greater than the sum of the components, rules, and art. 

What sort of nuance is involved in the relationship between theme, mechanism, and the experience of gameplay? That’s more than I can cover in this episode. For more ways of thinking beyond mechanisms, you can visit my blog at shipp board games dot blog spot dot com or catch future episodes of thinking beyond mechanisms on ludology.