Why Themes Matter

With all the discussions about historical accuracy, representation, and diverse perspectives in games, we really need to have a discussion on why any of that matters. Why does it matter what theme a designer uses? Why does it matter how that theme is handled? 

There are a lot of reasons why theme matters in games. Better themes make for better games. Themes make games easier to learn and more immersive. Different themes draw different people in. Theme can be the thing that takes a game from a sequence of mechanisms and makes it art. (I'm pretty sure people wouldn't have talked nearly as much about Holding On or The Grizzled if not for their themes.) Themes make games pretty, comprehensible, and meaningful. 

But there is a larger discussion to be had about theme and why it matters. Theme matters because our primary way of making sense of the world is through art. Yes, really. Let me explain. Art, in the form of books, movies, games, and other media, is where we write our myths. A myth is just a story that attempts to explain why the world is the way it is. And here's the kicker: we believe our myths over our histories. 

History is large and somewhat incomprehensible. Sometimes in history things just happen randomly. In myths, everything has a reason. Our myths are simpler and easier to remember. Our concept of the American West is largely a product of books and movies; it is mythical. (Side note for illustrators: Utah has buttes, Texas does not. Be advised.)

Our reliance on myth is very human and I am not advocating we throw out stories in favor of empirical research. Myths are simply better at communicating truth than facts are. For instance, people are more likely to change their mind if they know someone affected by an issue than if you just show them studies saying they are wrong. Stories have an emotional power that facts and statistics don't have. 

No, what I am advocating for is that we become more conscious myth-makers. We need to understand both the actual history behind our themes and the implications of our stories. For example, we have inherited the desire to discover a terra nullius, a concept that historically has been used to justify taking land from indigenous peoples. What does our desire for stories and themes centered on terra nullius say about us? What other ideas might we be perpetuating? Certainly games set in the real world have had an overwhelming tendency to ignore the voice and often the existence of native peoples, which is terra nullius, explicitly. 

But what about games not set on Earth? In some ways fantasy (used here to mean "not reality") is a stronger conveyer of our values, because we are not tied to following 'what really happened.' We are able to explore what could have been and what could be. To then use fantasy to double down on the exploitation and extermination of 'the other' is troubling. Fantastical themes need to know how they are connected to the real world. A fantasy setting can be a powerful tool to make a sharp critique of our culture or our history because we are not bound by historical accuracy. Fantasy can also be used to celebrate ideas that we have yet to see truly flourish in reality. The benefit of conscious myth-crafting is that you're unlikely to be accused of being 'generic' fantasy. 

Art has meaning. Themes have meaning. Systems have meaning. The stories we tell are how we make sense of the world. Given that that is the case, we should treat our themes as more than window dressing. Our themes do not just convey our personal worldview; they shape the reality of our players in a small way. Of course, how you choose to shape your myths will depend on your values. 

One way we can be better myth-makers is by having a better understanding of actual history. Did you know that historians believe that one in four cowboys was black? You wouldn't know that from our myths.  Accuracy to historical record is probably the 'safest' route when myth-making, because if you make someone upset you can appeal to history. Fortunately for us, history is so vast that it contains plenty of interesting details to mine. All it takes is research. Remember that what you think is history may only be myth. Another route we can take is to present ahistorical themes— details not true to the historical record. However, we still need to know the real history and the implications of our story. I don't mean to say that we need to justify that our fantasy could happen, but rather that we need to know what message our story has about our world. 

Theme and mechanics both matter for solid game design but only theme has the power to affect our understanding of reality. This isn't something you can opt out of. Your themes will affect your players perspective whether you like it or not. If you don't want to be a myth-maker, stick to designing abstract games. 

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

Meeples and Gender

This post is a continuation of my last post where I wrote about how much I love the world building in A Fistful of Meeples. Before getting into today's topic, a few notes: First, I am mostly writing this to share an interesting (to me) insight into world building and psychology that happens to be about gender. Second, any criticism I have of A Fistful of Meeples does not detract from the fact that I love this game. 

Let me begin with an assertion I hope is not controversial: meeples are inherently genderless. Even in games where gender might make sense. Reproduction in Agricola works the same way it does in Minecraft: any two adults can make a baby. Of course, not all meeples present as genderless, in spite of  the fact that they are abstracted pieces of wood. And that's what I want to explore. 

I argued in the last post that the world of A Fistful of Meeples is a meeple world in the same way that The Lego Movie depicts a lego world. Because I view the world as an animated playset and because meeples are genderless, I see the main worker roles—deputy, robber, miner, and builder— as genderless, something any person could pretend to be. At least, I begin to, until the madame enters the world. (I don't want to sit here and argue that women could be robbers in the Old West. Meeple Old West can be egalitarian if it wants to.) The point is, I don't think those jobs are inherently gendered, even in the context of the genre setting, but the job of a madame is inherently gendered. The word indicates a woman and the job requires a woman. (I consider a madame and a pimp to be fundamentally different jobs.) So what happens when a female character enters a genderless cast?

All the other characters become male. This is a purely psychological effect that manifests from a culture that views male as default. Once any non-male gender is defined, the remaining characters shift from genderless to "default gender" unless specified otherwise. I think the case for this is strongest in A Fistful of Meeples because of the context of soiled doves and who they serviced. The publisher doubled down by making the madame sculpt the only unique sculpt in the game. (She's wearing a skirt.) However, we can also see this dynamic at play in The Table is Lava and its expansion: the meeples were genderless until the expansion added pink meeples that were specifically coded as women. (The expansion is called Coconuts Edition.) I should note that The Table is Lava is also set in a world where the characters are meeples. Both of these games mix actual meeples and gender in a way I find jarring. 

Why does this matter? It matters because as designers we have to be intentional about our world building. We need to understand what the ramifications of specifically gendering one character are. In A Fistful of Meeples, by calling the character a madame rather than a bartender we end up with a cast of thirty male characters and one female. (There are more female meeples in the box cover art than in the game.) I know I have argued for specificity in world building in the past, but this is tokenization. Yes, the madame action is thematic to that role, but it could work just as well as a bartender or a card sharp. By coding every other character as a man the game creates a world where the only other implied females are whores. ("Is it family friendly?" "Yes—well, except for the whores.") Not only are they whores, but they are offscreen whores with no power or voice in the game. The only woman character in the game profits from implied female characters that have no purpose other than to rationalize what the builders are paying for at the saloon. Regardless of what you think about sex work in real life, this isn't what I would call good representation. 

I don't think there is any way to know if the gender breakdown in A Fistful of Meeples was intentional without asking the designers. It seems like the designers just pulled from famous archetypes that meshed with the mechanisms. But that's my point. World building should be intentional. Not all board games need the same levels of world building. I'm fairly neutral on surface level representation. Yes, it can be valuable, but I also see arguments for abstraction, such as the argument I make here. I want the level of world building to be motivated by the theme and mechanics. I want representation to be motivated by the story told in the game. And in the case of A Fistful of Meeples, I find the representation to be unnecessary to the point of slightly detracting from my enjoyment of the game. 

This psychological effect of assuming a gender binary is cultural and may fade over time. But there will always be choices in world building that we make or don't make that will change how our game is perceived. Sometimes abstraction might feel like silencing character stories and sometimes it might feel like opening them up to many interpretations. We have to know what kind of stories we are trying to tell. 

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

World Building in A Fistful of Meeples

I've been looking at methods for world building recently on this blog (most notably here and here), and today I want to spend some time looking at (yet another) example of a game that does it well. I recently acquired A Fistful of Meeples because I really like the mechanisms. But what impressed me after playing the game was the world building. 

There is no lore fluff in this game. Our sense of this world comes from the components, the mechanisms, and the illustration. The game takes itself seriously by eschewing jokey flavor text but not so seriously that I am asked to read a background novella. I love this. I am asked to simply accept the premise of the game on its face, and I do. The reason I can, however, is because everything else about the game works together to build the world. 

The board takes the basic shape of a mancala board and overlays it atop the main street of an old west town. The movement of the meeples as a part of the main mechanic feels like the flow of a group of people who all have multiple errands to run. All of the actions make sense and are thematic. There is some dissonance between active and inactive meeples, such as when a robber steals from a miner in a store that also has a deputy in it. But I believe in this world so much that I just accept that that's the way things work in the "Meeple Old West."

All of the characters are defined by what they want. Robbers want to steal. Deputies want to catch robbers. Builders want to improve the town. Miners want to buy supplies (or that's how I interpret it, anyway). These characters interact with one another mechanically but in such a way as to make their relationships clear. It's a simple view, but we are talking about a one street town. 

One of the things that makes the world work so well for me is that the meeples are not symbolic representations of human characters. The characters are meeples. The art is very clear on that point. I don't think that's the right choice for every game world, but I find it so easy to suspend disbelief in A Fistful of Meeples. The world feels incredibly consistent because the iconography and what it represents are so similar. The icon of a meeple represents a meeple. The board is the town. 

In some ways, this game reminds me of the beginning of The Lego Movie—a realistic view of a city portrayed through the medium of toys. But this game (like many games) is also reminiscent of The Sims. The players in A Fistful of Meeples are gods dictating the lives and paths of the characters. But players are also seemingly investors building up business empires in this small town. This is the only aspect of the game I wish were better explained. Who are we when we play? Why do robbers give us loot but also deputies? Is this town corrupted by corporate interests? In some ways I prefer playing as a god because the other interpretation takes the straightforward character agendas and muddies them. In the end, getting resources and points feels mechanical; it has to be there to be a game. But that feeling occurs entirely off the board, outside of the city and as a result only does minor damage to my buy-in of the world. World building in non-narrative board games is always going to be a little messy. While I wish this game meshed player gains with meeple actions in a way that made more sense, I still love how much world building there is in a small-box, 45 minute game. 

It's rare for me to play a game so grounded in a single place with such clear character goals. A Fistful of Meeples doesn't sacrifice concise, tight mechanics for theme, but instead leverages its mechanics to make the theme come alive. I love it. There is, however, one more odd moment in the game created by the one character I haven't talked about. In next week's post, I'm going to discuss the Madame. 

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

Characters with Agendas

I've written a number of times that characters need goals and desires. In this post, I'd like to look closer at how to develop those goals. 

In game design, action oriented decisions help propel players down various strategy paths. In world building for board games, character design should also be action oriented. You can write in the fluff that your character likes ice cream, but if ice cream isn't relevant to gameplay, your character's desire for it doesn't do much to create a sense of character. Irrelevant surface details are fine to include, but those should come last and as much as possible should be used to add texture to your game world by being congruous with the setting. 

How do we make a character's goals action oriented and thematic? I like to think of it as giving my characters agendas. They don't just have goals or desires; they have agendas. Those agendas drive them to take action. Those actions make up the game. A list of personality traits doesn't make a character. But give a character an agenda and the player will be able to imagine the personality of the character on their own.

Agendas imply desires, goals, and personality traits. Competing agendas can create conflict. Agendas don't have to be rational as long as they are apparent in the game mechanics. Agendas aren't just what a character wants but why they want it. The agenda in Agricola is to be prosperous and keep your family from starving. The characters don't have much in the way of personality, but the real need to eat makes those workers feel more like characters than many other farming euros. 

Giving your characters agendas is just the bare minimum, however. The goal should be to give them interesting agendas.  I've mentioned in the past that I am a fan of trope-flipping. But if you flip a trope enough, the reverse of the trope will also become a trope. So, instead, I am becoming a fan of what I call "thinking sideways." To explain this method, I first have to explain how I build characters in Dungeons and Dragons. 

If you play D&D long enough, you will eventually have to make a character solely to fill a gap in your party's composition. So you build a character that works mechanically and fits in the world, but has no personality yet. (Actually, that kind of sounds like most characters in board games.) Fortunately, the Player's Handbook has tables you can roll on to give you direction for roleplaying your character. Unfortunately, the tables are filled with tired tropes that don't really help make a character with the nuance I'm looking for. This is where thinking sideways comes into play. I usually choose a background (pg. 127 in the PHB) for my character based on what abilities it grants me rather than as backstory fodder. However, early in my roleplaying career I was rolling on the traits, ideals, and bonds tables and noticed how interesting my results were. I then realized that I was looking at the wrong tables for my background and was instead rolling on the tables of the previous background that were on the facing page. The results were interesting because they were no longer generic fantasy tropes when coupled with the 'wrong' background. The traits now suggested a unique and interesting character. (And, if I'm being honest, I think that it should be one big trait table for all the backgrounds to give a more interesting selection.) 

By looking sideways at adjacent character tropes and using them outside of their expected context, I can create better characters. Sometimes that means changing the agenda and sometimes that means changing the character. I can take a stock evil supervillain and give him a family and a need to protect them. Thanos is interesting because he isn't just the embodiment of evil; he has an agenda that's tied to emotions that are comprehensible to viewers. 

On the other hand, I can recast a character to better fit the agenda present in my game. I recast my inheritance game that featured multiple generations of aristocratic men and replaced them with murderous women who marry for wealth. Deadly Dowagers is still about accruing wealth and moving up the nobility ladder. The core mechanics didn't change a whole lot (at least not right away). But the game became more interesting because the cast was more interesting. Not simply because they are now women; that would be an art choice by itself. No, it's because the characters have a more interesting agenda. "Become rich and powerful over the course of generations" is a boring agenda. "Take matters into your own hands in spite of societal and moral objections" is a much more interesting agenda. 

If you're designing a dungeon crawler, write out a break down of a typical party. Then shuffle the traits around. Now, you won't be able to call someone an archer if they don't use a bow. But maybe dwarves with longbows and elves with axes can spark ways to develop your world in a unique direction. This same process can work in a lot of genres of games and is especially good for art direction. But don't discount the thematic and mechanic interplay of giving characters agendas and personalities. 

A note on character personalities: I describe the characters in Deadly Dowagers as murderous because that adjective describes their actions during gameplay. A character who regularly donates to religious charities might be described as pious. I would avoid personality descriptors that relate to mood—cranky, bubbly, gloomy, sunny— or those that relate to appearance. Show; don't tell. Your character's appearance belongs in their illustration. Your character's mood might appear in dialog, if there is any. If there isn't any dialog, I'd merely suggest mood through the art as well. 

Interrogate your designs. Why do my characters want to win? What is at stake for them? What are they willing to give up to succeed? How do their agendas conflict with other characters and with the world around them? At the very least, this method should make your characters more memorable, which hopefully transfers to a more memorable game. Best case scenario, your game experience is elevated by tight thematic/mechanic integration that also has greater emotional breadth and a unique world. 

Here's my agenda: I want to see more interesting characters in (non-narrative) board games. 

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

Discomfort vs. Offense

Continuing this miniseries on characters and world building, I'd like to build on some issues I touched on in my last post. 

In my own designs, I quite like making people question their assumptions. There is an element of surprise when things work out differently than you expect. There is also an element of discomfort. I don't mind that discomfort in games— if, and only if, it's there for a good reason. Discomfort can be caused by empathy, immersion, or learning uncomfortable truths. Embracing empathy as a design goal means embracing discomfort. Flash Point: Fire Rescue is often described as an uncomfortable game because you might not save everyone. This game came out a decade ago and we've only seen a handful of similarly uncomfortable themes since then. Most of the games that spring to my mind (The Grizzled, Holding On, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1) are cooperative games. I think that perhaps because cooperative games aren't inherently about player dominance, they have moved more easily away from straightforward power fantasies into new thematic territory. But while cooperative games may always be the testing ground for new types of emotional experiences, there's no inherent reason competitive games can't explore these themes as well. The thematic expression and emotional experience of a cooperative game will always be different from a competitive game, but that doesn't mean they can't both cover serious topics. 

I think that a number of game designers see the value of discomfort but choose a harmful shortcut to get there. The easiest way to achieve discomfort in players is thru an offensive theme. Not everything that is uncomfortable is offensive, but everything offensive is uncomfortable (to somebody). If offense didn't cause discomfort, it wouldn't be offensive. 

There are, however, layers to what makes something offensive. The first, surface layer, is what I think of as shock and awe. This type of offense creates nervous laughter and gasps at its irreverence. Think of it as unexpectedness (a good thing in small doses) turned up to eleven in the worst way possible. This is where Cards Against Humanity lives. The purpose of that game is to offend. The game components themselves are offensive. I don't believe shock and awe to be a redeemable quality in games. Or in anything, really. Shock and awe shuts down discourse and the possibility of other emotional experiences. 'Shutting down' is the opposite of my goal when I'm contemplating challenging themes. 

The next layer is asking players to violate taboos. Requiring players to read CAH cards out loud would fall under this category (although you can in theory play without ever speaking the cards aloud). In this layer of offense, players are actually doing the taboo-breaking. Another example is 'Spin the Bottle.' Many traditional teenage games center violating taboos. And I think that can be healthy in folk games that are at least loosely monitored by an adult. But I'm more skeptical about published games. There is plenty of space for abuse in these types of games/themes. If violating taboos were a genre someone wanted to reform in tabletop, I'd start with adding safety measures like those incorporated into indie TTRPGs or LARPs. However, I don't think board games are the best medium to explore IRL taboo-breaking. Board games are defined by written rules that imply a safely delineated social experience. Taboo-bending folk games exist in a more liminal space delineated by the social pressure of your peers. I'm not sure the two mix well. I want board games to be a haven for the socially awkward. 

Go one layer further and we find representational taboo-breaking. In these games, the characters, not the players, violate taboos. Here, finally, there is an argument both for and against. Thematic taboo-breaking can deliver a unique emotional experience and, if you are conscientious about the theme, a powerful message. On the flip side, your thematic elements might be in poor taste. Some themes may be situational and some may be non-starters. For example, killing your husband is situational. No one wants to play a 'modern-times' game about murdering their spouse. But set the game in the Victorian era and now people are willing to play. (I've literally changed peoples minds about whether they wanted to play my game, Deadly Dowagers, by clarifying the setting.) On the other hand, a game about adults hurting little kids is a non-starter. Punching down is always in poor taste, and there are some things that we cannot frame in a way that makes them more palatable. 

The next layer skirts the edge of taboo-breaking: making the unsympathetic sympathetic. This may be an unintentional result of using a difficult theme or of making a villain the main character. This layer and the previous rely on framing to avoid being offensive. You don't want to treat serious topics tritely. Taking serious topics seriously is the easiest way to stay out of trouble. But you also run the risk of celebrating a topic even if you treat it seriously. Making the villains the heroes is one way to accidentally celebrate evil acts. But so is making a Euro-centric game about colonialism. Personally, I think that fictional villains are a better way to go than historical atrocities. But some issues (i.e. slavery) should remain unsympathetic regardless of the setting. Make sure the unsympathetic stays unsympathetic in your game, unless you have a powerful reason to create a sympathetic villain. Regardless, be intentional and empathetic when handling unsympathetic themes. 

Finally, misrepresentation of another culture is offensive. I place this one last because it is often the most well-intentioned as well as unintentional. Cultural inaccuracies can range from the annoying to the harmful. If you aren't willing to do the necessary research and sensitivity tests, you are likely better off creating a fictional setting or designing with a theme from your own culture. Even then, many fictional tropes are stolen from marginalized cultures (i.e. shamans). There is a culture of exoticism in board games that feels eighty years behind the times. Blatant inaccuracies translate to your audience as "The designer did not care; they were just looking to profit off someone else's culture." It's past time to let different cultures speak for themselves. 

Your design reflects your values. You must be intentional and empathetic when designing difficult themes. Listen to feedback about your theme. Don't include something just because it sounds cool. The more you want players to be uncomfortable the more carefully you have to tread. 

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

Baddies in Board Games

I'm going to be building on last week's post about non-narrative characters. In this post, I'd like to discuss the thorny problem of evil player characters in non-narrative games. 

What qualifies as evil, especially in a non-narrative game? The problem with discussing villains is that the discussion can swing wildly from creative writing techniques to real world ethics (whether or not the person speaking is qualified to speak about ethics). So, let's set a simple definition for the sake of this discussion and try not to wade to deep into topics I'm not qualified to talk about. Let's define fictional evil as intentional harm to others for selfish or other immoral reasons. 

What type of evil PCs (or NPCs) already exist in board games? There's a whole spectrum, but most people tend to think about supervillains and forget the others. Disney and comic book villains are at the less evil end of the spectrum. We don't see much of their motivation in gameplay and these games are typically family friendly. As a result, the actions of the heroes and villains don't feel very different from one another. Similarly, some faction-based games have clear good and bad sides, but that knowledge comes from an outside source (e.g. any Lord of the Rings game where you can play as orcs). Anti-hero PCs, like in any given heist game, tend to have a clearly selfish motivation but the harm they do is typically either non-violent or violent against someone who is portrayed as more evil. Sometimes, baddies aren't more evil than the good characters, but instead are secretly a faction with hidden motivation. These games may end in a betrayal, but if the betrayal is not for immoral or selfish reasons then the character is not evil by our definition. Finally, we have characters that are clearly evil based on their actions within the game. These characters are the trickiest to design well. 

A believably evil character has goals and few moral compunctions about how they reach those goals. Not every game has the ability to showcase a character's values and motivation during gameplay (although I think you should try). Recognizable characters are able to lean on outside sources to establish why the baddies are bad. However, this means that your game must make sense within that larger context. If the Sauron in your game is trying to amass gold and dominate trade routes, any preexisting knowledge players have of the IP will only cause dissonance. 

Player characters that are believably evil are a tricky proposition. Often they must rely on either abstraction or absurdity, even if they have external sources. Vile acts carry a strong emotional component for audiences. Abstraction and/or absurdity helps relieve that emotional stress. Think about the abstracted murders of the many Jack the Ripper themed games. An excellent example of both abstraction and absurdity is The Bloody Inn. (Any small-ish card game will be necessarily abstracted.) In The Bloody Inn, murder is simply represented by moving a card to your player area. The absurdity of The Bloody Inn comes from the sheer number of crimes you'll be committing all while also attempting to run a profitable business. The Bloody Inn also uses cartoonishly macabre art to set the absurd tone of the game. 

A quick note about abstraction— All board games abstract theme to a certain extent. However, the type of thematic abstraction we see in The Bloody Inn carries weight. Instead of focusing on graphic realism, this sort of abstraction allows designers to shift the players' focus to the decisions involved in evil acts. I'm not sure there is much value in grossing out players or making them violate taboos (more on this in a coming post), however exploring the decisions that can lead to devaluing human life, especially at an abstracted remove, is very interesting to me. Think about the difference between plays and movies. Plays often (not always) eschew special effects in favor of exploring the psychology behind actions. I think that emotional journey is a great reason to make a game with evil PCs and an even greater reason to include a certain amount of abstraction. 

A game that I feel does not succeed in this vein is Abomination: Heir of Frankenstein. Right off the bat, this game is much less abstracted, both in player actions and art assets. Again, abstraction provides a useful mental buffer for players to not get too emotionally affected by the actions they are taking. Further, while the number and severity of crimes in Abomination does trend to the absurd, the game plays it straight and not for laughs. Laughter is also a useful mental buffer when playing games with murder. The art style is macabre in a more serious tone, like what you would see in a grim dark RPG. Still, I think that where the game really falls down is in fumbling its source material. The serious tone and graphic nature of the game could have been forgiven if the external source it relied upon in theming lined up with the action of the game. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein uses the horrific setting of the book to make a point about the monstrous nature of society. In Abomination, you (a mad scientist type) are the monstrous one, not society. The tonal mismatch means that while the theme helps you understand what you are doing, it does little to address why. As a result, this game can't rely on the source material to justify your actions. [NB: Much of the positive feedback for this game was how well the theme came through a euro-style game. But I feel that is a failing of other euros, not a saving grace of Abomination.]

If you are going to design a game with truly evil playable characters, you really need to have either internal or external sources for motivation (ideally both). The Bloody Inn succeeds because we believe that the characters are greedy and that their greed drives them to commit horrific crimes. Even with external sources, Abomination fails at character motivation. "Because you want to be like Dr. Frankenstein" is a bad motivation based on the source material (spoiler alert: he dies) and "because the monster is forcing me to do it" is even worse, as it is not a motivation at all. Better motivators for evil acts would be single word traits, like pride, ambition, greed, or revenge. These traits can be made explicit through a character's actions throughout the game. One of the actions in The Bloody Inn is money laundering, which seems mostly to exist to drive home the idea of greed as a motivation.

Playable characters require more justification for their actions than non-playable characters. Asking players to perform actions that represent evil acts should not be a decision you make lightly. Whether your game is silly or serious, it will make some sort of statement about evil. That statement can be either simple or complex. The Bloody Inn makes a fairly simple statement: that greed is the root of greater acts of evil. I try to make a more complicated statement in Deadly Dowagers: strong ambition in a repressive society can lead to evil acts. I rely on both internal and external sources of motivation to justify character actions. My game more or less requires players to have a passing familiarity with the role of women in the Victorian era. Internally, the mechanics attempt to show that repressiveness as well as showing the single-minded pursuit of gain by distilling otherwise thematically named actions down to monetary transactions. Unlike The Bloody Inn, Deadly Dowagers tries to (mostly) avoid absurdity by portraying a more complex motivation for the characters. (One side effect of this complexity is that your villains may become somewhat sympathetic to your players.) 

Believable villain PCs need context, motivation, abstraction, and a message about the nature of evil to be effective. Absurdity is optional but helps draw players in. Should you design evil PCs in board games? If you are interested in emotion-driven design and thoughtful thematic integration, evil PCs can pack a punch. If you are only interested in evil PCs because they sound cool, I wouldn't recommend them to you for reasons I'm going to unpack in my next post. 

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

Non-narrative Characters

Over the past few years, narrative board games have been getting better and better. With representatives like Forgotten Waters, Sleeping Gods, and Destinies, more attention has been paid to the quality of character arcs (or simply interesting character descriptions) in games. The problem with stopping the discussion at narrative games is that most board games cannot rely on narrative tools to help shape characters (and certainly narrative games also use non-narrative tools as well). So, how do we show characterization in non-narrative games?

First, we need to recognize that a game character only exists for the duration of the game. Every instantiation of that character outside of gameplay is merely additional lore that can either support and flesh out a character or contradict what is revealed during gameplay (which is a bad thing). The game is the window through which we experience the character's world. What we know about the game is what we know about the character. It also follows that the characters we create for a world should feel like they are a part of that world. 

As I have written several times before, character goals (what a character desires most) should align with their win condition. Characters may have secondary goals, values, or desires, but characters must be driven by their win conditions to be believable. They should have a purpose in life that closely ties to the 'why' of gameplay. In other words, both the player and the character should be invested in the outcome of the game. 

A character's powers/unique mechanics denote their values. You only get better at building things by spending a lot of time building things (take it from me, a theatrical carpenter), therefore a character who is better than average at building must value their role in society as a builder. (Most likely, that is. Unless you indicate otherwise, your audience will generally assume a character performs an action because they choose to. Board games are, after all, largely about choices.) Since all we know about a character is what they do in a game, we assume what they do must be important to them or to the society they live in. How someone solves a problem says a lot about their worldview, which is why character mechanics are so foundational to a character's values. 

Rules systems beyond individual powers indicate cultural norms. If a thematic rule is not rationalized by physics we can assume the rule exists because of the culture within the game world. Scoring that doesn't allow a player to win by more than two points might indicate a culture steeped in notions of honor and fair play. A scoring system that only allows a player to win if they are ahead by more than two points might indicate a culture that places emphasis on merit and achievement. A theme will always feel pasted on if the core system does not largely resemble the world it represents. My game, Deadly Dowagers, uses rules restrictions to represent the restrictive nature of Victorian society, especially for women. 

Characters exist within the cultural norms of the rules and respond to them. Characters might be trying to be the best within their cultural system, or they might fight against it. Factions are the result of conflicting cultural norms. Factions are more believable if their values and beliefs are in conflict with another faction. Values and beliefs, of course, are expressed by their unique faction mechanics. Root displays this concept beautifully. You don't need to read the lore for Root to understand the values and friction of the factions, all of that is present in the mechanics. The Eyrie places value on tradition which is expressed through a programming mechanic. (Programming, like tradition, is slow to change in the face of new information.) Their isolation to one spot on the board shows how their previous power has waned and contracted. Their history and values shine through during set up and rules explanation, only to be reinforced by gameplay. Root also displays a shining example of faction friction with the Cats and the Alliance. You only need to glance from the sawmills to the faction named the Woodland Alliance to see the conflict brewing. The facts that the sawmills are being built by cats and that the Alliance are small prey creatures only underscores the conflict. So we end up with a faction that prizes industry above the homes and lives of others, a faction bound by tradition, a faction inherently weaker that must rely on coalition building, and a character who works outside of the rule of law, much the same way he operates outside the lines on the map. Any lore only exists to explicitly state and underscore what is shown in gameplay. 

So, what is the purpose of lore, other than clearly stating what the mechanics may only have implied? Any lore that isn't directly related to the action of the game exists to establish the atmosphere of the world. Setting the tone thematically adds texture to your world but also allows you to prime your players for a certain experience. A jokey tone implies a different gameplay experience than a chilling tone. So, You've Been Eaten has some of the best intro fluff I've come across in that it establishes the world of the game that exists during gameplay, sets the tone of a light, not-so-serious game, and is funny in its own right. Fluff that doesn't underscore the events of the game or set the mood will instead distract from and muddy the gameplay experience. Which isn't to say you can't make jokes, but they need to be jokes that make sense in the universe of the game. 

Creating rich characters in board games will never look the same as it does in novels or movies. That doesn't mean, however, that we shouldn't be creating compelling characters in our games. But the primary way we do that is by world-building through our mechanics, not apart from them. The game is the world. The actions are the character. 

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