Design Practicum: How scale affects dynamics in MCDM's Super Codenames

Here's something weird. The RPG designers over at MCDM like to relax by playing Codenames together. Recently, they experimented with a super-sized game of Codenames, four times the size of a regular game. You can watch MCDM play Codenames here and "Super Codenames" here. 

For "Super Codenames," MCDM bought four copies of the game, in order to have enough agent cards. Instead of a five by five array of cards, the 'board' is ten by ten. Each five by five quadrant coincides to a regular key card. Two of the quadrants are blue-bordered keys and two are red, resulting in an even number of red and blue words on the board.

Some rules had to change. Because of the even number of clues, the team going second picked one of their cards to cover before the game started. Due to the increased opportunity to pick an assassin, a team would not lose unless they hit two assassin spaces. Additionally, MCDM normally plays with house rules that don't allow for note-taking of any kind, however that is untenable for Super Codenames. On their first play-through, the spymasters took notes; on the second, everyone did. 

Playing Codenames at this scale brought about a number of changes in dynamics. Spymasters very quickly changed clue-giving strategies to worry less about avoiding bystanders and even the other teams cards in favor of covering as many of their cards as they could. This was a valid strategy because each team started with over thirty cards on the table. This unconcern with wrong answers resulted in a loss of tension that a regular-sized game has. Even the assassin, who now required two hits to be deadly, was no longer a significant source of tension. 

The sheer number of cards also made the game feel more fair. A regular game always has the chance that one team has a whole bunch of easily relatable items and the other team does not. Playing four sets of cards at once evens out the chances of relatable items, especially since clues could span across the boards. A tangible result of this was that there were multiple instances of clue words given for six or seven cards, something incredibly difficult in a normal game. For less impressive clues, the clues were more straightforward, with fewer logical leaps. As field agents became used to more straightforward clues, they began to miss clues they would have had no trouble connecting in a regular game of Codenames (such as connecting heart to attack). 

The drawback to the number of cards (and clues given over the course of the game) was information overload for both spymasters and field agents. This was reduced somewhat by note-taking. However, gameplay shifted considerably with the introduction of note-taking (especially in game 2) towards a logic puzzle rather than a competitive game. The loss of competitive feeling became most evident when players from both teams, at times, would cooperatively brainstorm about what a clue might mean. 

MCDM plays with a meta-dynamic they call "signal jamming," which is where members of the opposing team try to persuade the guessing team to guess an answer that they believe is wrong.  It adds a delightful level of subterfuge to the game, getting more complex as a player might suggest an answer they believe is correct in order to steer a team away from it. Signal jamming is completely lost in Super Codenames. The field agents are so overwhelmed with figuring out their own clues that they don't have the mental space to figure out opponents clues AND steer them in the wrong direction. 

Another meta-dynamic MCDM plays with is the "unconnectable clue" guess. In the rules of Codenames, teams can always guess the clue number plus one. However, if there isn't a leftover clue to guess, most players will pass to the other team. Some of the MCDM players have made an art trying to get inside the spymaster's head and guess which word on the table was so different from the words they guessed correctly on that turn that it must be one of their words. This move has worked at least once, but shows up more often as a strategy to consider before discarding for safer plays. In Super Codenames, the unconnectable clue, like signal jamming, is lost. 

In fact, Super Codenames has such different dynamics that it started to build its own meta after only two plays. In set up, the four sets of clues were divided by a cross of black ribbon on the table to help the spymasters more easily see which quadrants they were looking at. However, because the field agents knew how many of their cards might be in each quadrant (8 or 9), they were able to eliminate quadrants late in the game, significantly narrowing down the number of cards they had to consider for a clue. 

I was not expecting how the gameplay shifted while still maintaining the basic rules. Super Codenames is a harder game than Codenames because of the amount of information needed to be processed by all the players. Super Codenames is an easier game because the connections are simpler to make and the tension is lower around possible mistakes. There is more room for expert clues (clue:0 and clue:infinite) and coming back from behind. Super Codenames is a much, much longer game. The game length became overly long from a viable product standpoint. But the added length gave more room for meta-guesses within a single play-through based on table talk and previous guesses. However, if a team were to fall behind significantly, the game could drag on for over an hour before the chance of a reset. 

In Principles of Design #7: Scale and Proportion, we talked about scale being the actual size of objects. For Super Codenames, the object that increases in size is the 'board'. The bigger an object, such as an oil painting, the more room for additional information to be presented to the viewer. (The Garden of Earthly Delights is twenty times larger than the Mona Lisa.) Making the 'board' larger increased play time, cognitive load, and drastically changed dynamics. By changing the scale, we see how the addition of more information in the form of components can both simplify and complicate a game, make a game both easier and harder, and make a game feel both more balanced (greater fairness in clue giving) and less balanced (an overall messier game with greater possibility of an uncatchable leader). The shift in dynamics was solely because of the increase of information presented to players as a result of a change in scale. 

Design Practicum: Dissecting Quacks of Quedlinburg

Unlike our look at Roam, I am not going to focus on design principles for Quacks of Quedlinburg. Instead, I am going to 'beat out' the game to examine the emotional impact of each action. 

When actors beat out a script, they are looking for goals and obstacles. The interaction between goals and obstacles creates emotion. So, instead of trying to describe the emotion of the players, we first must be aware of the goals and obstacles. Let's look at an overview of the set up and first round of the game.

Set up: Recipes are mini goals that if reached might achieve the main goal of winning the game. Variable recipes mean that the game is harder to develop a universal strategy for.

Fortune teller deck: Almost fifty percent of the deck contains effects that are not immediate, but become goals for the next round. The obstacle is that players must meet a certain condition to receive the reward.

Potion phase: The goal is to pull chits out of a bag in a way that scores the most points. One obstacle is that the only way to effect this is by buying chits in the evaluation phase to manage the probability of pulls. Another obstacle is the busting mechanic, making when a player stops pulling from their bag part of the central tension of the game.

Evaluation phase: Players see how well their goals were met and plan for future rounds. The goal is to manage probability and the obstacle is that players are limited to purchasing two chits, of different colors, per round. 

Here we see where player actions and decisions come up against the restrictions of the rules. This builds tension and creates a pay off for effort at the end of the round. However, Quacks relies heavily on mechanics that are luck based to the point that player goals don't even come into play. These mechanics also influence the player experience, even though the players have little control over them.

Uncertainty and surprise are built into the fabric of the game from set up. My husband and I have been playing thru the recipe sets, but even though we know we will be playing set 4 next, we don't know what that means strategically and won't until we play it. That variability gives a sense of excitement from before the game starts, as the players learn the version of the game they get to play that play-through.  Quacks chooses to spread out when certain recipes are available. The purple and yellow recipes show up just in time to be pleasant surprises of new possible mechanics. A large portion of the mechanics are luck based with the central mechanism being push-your-luck. There are three randomizers in the game: a deck, a die, and bag-building. This high number of randomizers fuels the feeling of uncertainty and lack of control. 

The central emotion of Quacks is one of constant expectation of reward. Just reading the recipes allows players to imagine getting the rewards in the near future, which kicks off the game's relentless reward mechanic. The first action that happens after set up is a random bonus to one or more players from the fortune teller deck. This sets the tone of randomized rewards for the rest of the game. The next thing that happens is the potion phase: a series of possible rewards in the form of chits pulled from your bag. Not every chit is a reward, and the reward value varies depending on the order the chits are pulled out. As players come to the end of the potion phase, they begin to calculate the risk to reward chance of pushing further in order to come out ahead of the other players or reach a certain milestone. Importantly, busting does not remove all rewards from the potion phase; it merely limits which rewards you can have. After the potion phase, the lead player gets an additional reward in the form of a die roll. In a more strategic game, it would be ludicrous to give the player doing the best such a strong bonus. Here, the die roll is just one more reward players are competing for. The rest of the round is spent tallying the rewards received and upgrading in the hope of future rewards. Rounds 2 and 3 add diversity to possible rewards with the addition of the yellow and purple recipes. 

A simple overview of the gameplay might look like this:

Set up: First, players are uncertain what recipes they will play. Then, players get an overview of future rewards as they learn the recipes they will be using.

Fortune teller deck: Before drawing a card, players anticipate what rewards will be available that round. After drawing, players are either rewarded or have a new goal for the round. 

Potion phase: Anticipation builds with each chit pull. Some chit combos create exciting moments of reward. As players come closer to busting, they also push for end of round rewards. 

Evaluation phase: Lead player receives a random reward. Players tally rewards and upgrade for the next round. 

The rewards come in many different flavors. Victory points are the most straight forward reward and determine the winner of the game. Rubies and coins are rewards that can be turned into upgrades in the form of refilling the flask (an item that allows a do-over in the potion phase), moving the droplet (a direct upgrade to the player board), buying chits (an upgrade to the player's bag), and conversion to victory points. The fortune teller deck and the bonus die both contain a variety of rewards. The powers of the chits determined by the recipe books reward players with additional progress on their player board and occasionally in other ways. Each chit pulled also impacts the chance of busting, so every pull that does not increase that chance feels like a reward. 

Rewards are exciting and surprising in Quacks. The uncertainty of the rewards builds excitement for the expectation that players will eventually be rewarded. The frequency of rewards fuels emotional investment in the game mechanics. The unevenness of reward distribution builds tension. The lack of player control and high luck ratio keeps players in the desired emotional state where more strategic choices would actually undermine the emotional content of the game. 

The rhythm of the game adds to the overall excitement level and reinforces the the feeling of randomness. For instance, the simultaneous play during the potion phase introduces a level of chaos on top of the push-your-luck mechanism that moves the mechanism away from a feeling of high stakes tension. Instead, players feel swept along in the chaos, only returning to a feeling of tension at the end of the phase as players begin to stop pulling. The complexity and rewards ramp up nicely from round to round as players have more and more possible chits to pull from their bags. My first impression of the game was probably most strongly influenced by the rhythm. To me, Quacks feels like a pebble kicked down a hill that grows into an avalanche, and the players are merely trying to stay out in front of it or get buried. That feeling comes from the uncertainty, lack of total control, and the chaotic, building rhythm of the gameplay. 

I should mention that none of this emotional content comes from the theme. The theming is somewhat creative, the art is nice, the layout of the boards is nicer, but nothing about the actions of the game feels like the story paragraph found in the rules. In fact, if the bags were the cauldron and players were randomly ladling potions out that would feel more thematic. In my ideal world, the chits would be 3D bubble-shaped and total potion composition would have an end of round effect. There are implied customers, but we never see them. My point is not that the lack of theme makes the game weaker (that's up to your personal taste), but that this game's emotional content exists in spite of the lack of strong theming. I wouldn't call Quacks an abstract game, although it sort of is. The luck and variable powers in Quacks seem to put it in a different category, even allowing for a broad definition of abstract games. (I don't recognize "pasted-on theme" as a game category, either.) I would describe Quacks as an experience-based game, specifically an emotion-driven game, meaning that the central experience of the game is the emotion(s) players feel while playing. Specifically, the feeling of uncertain reward that steadily but chaotically ramps up throughout the game. 

The Seven Categories of Actions in Board Games

I have workshopped this idea on Facebook, so I know exactly how controversial it is. I believe all game actions can be distilled down to seven categories, which are largely component and mechanic agnostic. That said, this may be the most mechanic-heavy post I ever write. 

What are actions? 
Actions are player-driven changes to a play-state that occur once a game has begun and before a game ends. Thus, I am not considering set-up or final scoring when thinking about action categories. Actions are governed by rules. Anything that occurs outside of the rules is not an action. Actions are usually organized into turns, rounds, and/or phases. Turns are not synonymous with actions. Examples of actions are move up to 2 spaces, attack, collect resources, etc. Actions may be a blending of multiple action categories. Actions can be organized by a number of different methods. Most commonly, actions are organized by mechanisms or components that are used. My action categories are abstracted beyond mechanisms and components. Action categories look at the goals of a (successful) action. What is this action trying to accomplish? 

Action Categories

1. Acquisition- Actions that result in games elements being claimed exclusively by a single player are ‘acquisition’ actions. Acquired elements may be either secret information, private information, or public information. Example: drawing cards face-up or face-down.

2. Deployment- Actions that move game elements from a hidden or inactive status to a visible, active status are ‘deployment’ actions. Deployed elements maybe played onto a personal play-space or a shared play-space. Example: playing cards into a tableau.

3. Spatial Adjustment- Actions that change the physical location of already deployed game elements are ‘spatial adjustment’ actions. Physical location includes height, such as in a stack. Adjusted pieces may ‘belong’ to the player taking the action, another player, or be a part of the shared play-state. Example: moving tokens around a track.

4. Value Adjustment- Actions that change the assigned value of a game element are ‘value adjustment’ actions. Value adjustments are most often numeric. Value adjustments can occur to a player's elements, their opponent's elements, or shared elements. Adjustments to a player's elements tend to increase value while adjustments to opponents elements tend to decrease value. Commonly used to mitigate luck. Example: attack damage. 

4a. Value Generation (Geller corollary)- Actions that set the value of game elements that were previously null are ‘value generation’ actions. Value generation is most commonly luck based, with the frequent use of dice. This is largely a sub-set of value adjustment. Example: dealing cards randomly to auction board spaces that have set values.

5. Social Leveraging- Actions that change the perceived value of game elements are ‘social leveraging’ actions. Changes in perceived value do not change the absolute value of the game element. This category is the subjective version of Value Adjustment. Social leveraging nearly always includes discussing the play-state with other players, with the goal of getting other players to act the way you want them to. In order to fall into the 'Social Leveraging' action category, the actions must be a part of the game as described in the rules. Examples: negotiating, bluffing/lying, alliances. 

6. Resource Generation- Actions that create game elements as a part of game play are ‘resource generation’ actions. Resource generation actions are most common in party games. Examples: drawing, acting/miming, giving clues, story-telling. 

7. Null Actions (Hanson corollary)- Actions that leave the play-space unchanged are ‘null actions’. The most common example is the option to pass on a player’s turn. 

What about failure?

Not all actions succeed. Actions do not have to succeed to qualify for their category. Attempting an ‘acquisition’ action and failing still qualifies the action as an acquisition action. In fact, many mechanisms are built around the high potential for failure. Auction and dexterity games have high levels of acquisition failure for highly desired pieces and lower levels of failure for less desired pieces. All social leveraging actions have a high expected failure rate, as those actions rely on the subjective ability to persuade other players. Spatial adjustment has a middling failure rate. Players can be out-maneuvered and blocked from moving into a space, but will stop having fun if this happens too often. Deployment has a low failure rate, because not being able to activate pieces is not fun and slows game tempo. Value adjustment and value generation also have low failures due to frustration factors. Instead, players are usually offered mitigation and retaliation options rather than the ability to cancel a player’s turn. Resource generation, by its nature, has zero failure rate. Provided all players are participating, no matter what quality of element they create, elements created will be used in play. Whether or not those elements are effective generally falls into other categories. Null actions that occur frequently would be considered a failure by the designer, because not acting is not fun. The actions themselves, by definition, always succeed. 

Using Action Categories

As stated, action categories look at the goals of an action. I use action categories as a diagnostic tool.  When a design needs a mechanism, or needs a replacement mechanism, I look at what the goal of the mechanism should be then examine the various mechanisms that best reach that goal while fitting the constraints of the overall game. I imagine most designers think this way to a point, but I will literally think, "This way of acquiring cards doesn't work. What is another acquisition action I can put here instead?" The reason why the categories don't necessarily feel balanced against each other (spatial adjustment may seem like a subset of deployment to some, for example) and why many actual game actions are blends of the categories (dice combat includes value generation via dice and value adjustment to a player's damage track) is because these are tools of thinking about actions that help me determine a path forward in design. Other designers use other categories. Isaac Shalev lists game subsystems as resource acquisition, information, conversion, conflict initiation, conflict resolution, scoring, end-game triggers, and markets. We can see there is a certain amount of crossover between our lists, but clearly we have different goals when using our respective diagnostic tools. Where my list is more concerned with how components shift throughout gameplay, his is more concerned with the underlying information those components represent. 

I'm not sure how useful action categories are for other designers. But if you do want to use them, here are some things to remember. Mechanisms can fall into a number of categories or more than one category at once depending on how they are implemented. (Components also fall into various categories depending on how they are used.) Worker placement involves a player deploying a worker to acquire a resource. Dice worker placement involves value generation before placing and frequently value adjustment to mitigate luck. Some worker placement games have rule that you can move a worker that has already been placed, a form of spatial adjustment. So there isn't much point to listing every mechanism that can apply to each category, so much as simply understanding what goals the categories describe. If I am designing a hand management game, I need a mechanism for players to acquire cards. By understanding that the goal is acquisition, I can evaluate mechanisms- existing and those I invent- by how well they meet the goal of acquisition of cards in a game that is more about managing the cards after I have them. So, simply drawing cards may not give enough choice, but pick-and-pass drafting may pull too much focus from primary goal of hand management. In which case, I would continue to evaluate other acquisition actions until I found one that works in the context of the game.

Most often, I use the first four categories when designing. The remainder came out of a brainstorming session that existed partially on Facebook (thanks to Eric Geller and Cody Hanson for their suggestions). Whatever system you use, find a way to think critically about your design at a granular level and you will become a better designer. 

Brecht, Board Games, and Immersion

Immersion is a hot topic in board game design right now. Games that are immersive are seen as the ultimate way to provide the player an 'experience.' The trick is that games with strategy, or even copious rules, have a difficult time becoming more immersive. 

I've been thinking about immersion a lot from the perspective of theatre. In theatre, immersion is desirable because it creates strong emotions in the audience, allowing theatre-goers to be 'swept away' by the story. However, not every epoch of theatre prioritized immersion. 

Bertolt Brecht (1891-1956) was a famous playwright who promoted a type of performance style known as Epic Theatre. For modern audiences, "epic" theatre would feel anything but. Brecht promoted making the technical elements of a production visible, rather than hidden. He wanted actors to regard their characters as if in the third person, creating a philosophical space between actor and character. He thought unity was redundant. His style, now referred to as Brechtian, was crafted to create what he referred to as 'alienation' in the audience.  By not connecting emotionally to a familiar subject, the audience would be freed to think critically about the subject. Contemplation, not emotion, was the desired outcome. 

In today's productions, Brecht's ideas are usually sampled rather than followed prescriptively. Hamilton's minimalist staging and simplified base costumes are Brechtian, the musical itself is not. Emotional experiences dominate theatre from the highly immersive to the bare bones productions. Even more than movies, theatre is about emotion. On this front Brecht seems to have lost. However, if we extrapolate his ideas beyond theatre, we may find new uses for them. 

Tabletop role playing games are having a moment. Immersive storytelling is widely seen as a hallmark of an excellent campaign. If you watch any online TTRPGs, pay attention to the immersive scenes. What you won't see is much in the way of dice or rules or stats. Essentially, the game part is on hold while the players act out a dramatic improv scene. (I am not criticizing; it's my favorite part of DnD.) The take away is that rules break immersion. The bad news is that there are more rules per minute played in board games than in TTRPGs. 

Another break in immersion in (most) board games is that they are too short on narrative for the players to connect emotionally to the characters in the same way an audience member connects to a character in a movie. For one thing, the 'actors' in the board game have no script, no director, no rehearsal process. 

There are a host of other ways board games break immersion by their very nature (top down, third person, lack of sound track). There are a few ways to cope with these inconvenient facts. One is to add an app to your game with a sound track and extensive, dynamic narration. Another is to quit games and make escape rooms or theatre. The rest of us can turn to Brecht. Experiences do not have to be immersive to be an experience. Immersion excites us because we feel a small amount of risk in being pulled into a world other than the one we spend most of our time in. But immersion also excites  us because of the number of senses (real or imaginary) that we have to engage. We can engage our players in ways that excite them while not designing 'immersive' games.

One thing to keep in mind is that critical thinking is in opposition to emotion. The more thinky a game, the less immersive it is likely to be. Detective games skirt this issue by making the players take on the personas of people who think critically for a living, but that trick is limited in its scope. A game does not have to be all one or the other, but an individual element is unlikely to be both. Decisions players have control over will usually engage critical thinking more, and random events will engage emotion more. That is, unless the decisions are not gameplay related, such as which color token to use. Additionally, theme integration helps increase the emotional content of strategic elements.

Most 'immersive' games end up being a balance of immersion and critical thinking. Just like how Brecht is selectively used in theatrical productions, games must be selective in the immersion content. Each element provides a part of the overall experience. Designers must decide what sort of experience it will provide. 

For this post, I referenced History of Theatre by Brockett and Hildy, available here.

How to Design Experiences

There is an increasing call among board game designers to design for experience over theme or mechanics. This is probably the right move and potentially inevitable as the hobby matures. However, there is seemingly a split in the design world over whether making your players feel a certain way is even possible. Some posit that by extensive play testing and observation, eventually you can have an idea of if your design has landed in a certain emotional space. Others will argue such considerations are silly, because you can never guarantee the emotional response of a given player. I think it would be a good idea to look at what experiences are. 

Experiences are made up of (at least) a couple different types of input: sensory and mental. Sensory input consists of touch, sound, smell, sight, and passage of time. For our purposes, we will ignore taste. In board games, this translates to the texture and weight of components, the smells of wood, cardboard, and plastic, the sounds of components interacting, the art and graphics, and the objective and perceived length of the game. Mental input consists of instructions, math, logic, pattern recognition, and story elements. Rules of play, strategies, mechanics, theme, characters, and narrative are all types of mental input. 

Mental and sensory input combine to create subjective personal experiences. We respond to experiences with emotions: pleasure, excitement, sadness, irritation, etc.  In other words, mental and sensory input are processed by our brains and eventually output emotions. That means the type of input matters if we want certain emotions, on average, to come out. Because designers/publishers control the input, they can create certain desired emotions in players. Yes, really. This isn't a bizarre concept for artists of any type; it is baked into how art is made. Art, by definition, is something that is viewed by an audience in order to create an emotional response in the viewer(s). 

Artists are not merely emotion-driven creatures, they are emotion manipulators. Certain colors do tend to elicit certain emotions. Hence Picasso's Blue Period. Ballet shows us that movement also affects us emotionally. Anyone who has watched a movie scene before the sound track is added knows the emotional impact of sound. We do not have to start from scratch and guess at the emotional impact of our design decisions. We know that round length and turn length will affect how players feel during a game. Not whether they like a game, but how frenetic the game feels. We know that making changes to turn length can tune the output of players' emotions. 

This all seems deceptively simple. It takes a certain amount of vigilance to pursue every detail of game's design with the eye to making sure the input matches the desired output. This effort is worth it. Players will remember how a game made them feel long after they have forgotten how to play. By stepping into the emotional realm of other artists, game designers are committing to creating memories in other people. I like that feeling. 

The Terrible Tragedy of Unreadable Fluff: or Why You Should Exercise Restraint With Lore

Fluff. The blah-blah. Deep lore. Conventional wisdom says that die hard fans always want more lore, so lore might as well be included in a game to show fans that there is a larger world that your game is set in. 

The reality is that you are so enamored of your lore that you are forcing it into spaces it doesn't belong. Like inside the game box. 

World-building is a good way to set your game in a rich thematic framework. I am a proponent of world-building; I am anti-fluff. When does world-building become fluff? When it is implemented poorly. 

The most common forms of fluff are found in lore booklets. At first the player thinks, "More rules I need to learn," only to discover a short story about a game world that the players have not experienced yet. Usually these booklets are in low to medium narrative games, because high narrative games include the narrative in gameplay. The inclusion of this booklet assumes that enough players will care about the backstory of the game to justify the cost of printing it. I'm not convinced that is true, especially if the game is a new property. Most people open a game box to play a game (or learn the rules) not to read a work of short fiction. 

Unnecessary fluff becomes more egregious when the events it describes are unconnected to the events of gameplay. If the game is about farming, players don't need a ten page story setting up the socio-political landscape of the world. If the characters are given rich personalities, players may be disappointed if the gameplay is largely abstracted. Lore should feel relevant to the events that occur in the game. Lore should not read like fan fiction of your game.

Fluff enters into ridiculous territories when it assumes a game will do well enough to have sequels or spin-offs (and that those will also do well). Love Letter and the other games in that thematic series (Tempest) suffered from this assumption. Fortunately for Love Letter, it exists well as a standalone game without much fluff. Players should be given time to develop affection for a new property in ways that leave them wanting more. Assuming every world can support a series of games is hubris. 

Nomads is notable offender.  It comes with a lore booklet. Each character has a bio that has no connection to gameplay. The story feels out of sync with the gameplay. And the game begs multiple times for you to check out a now defunct website for more games and stories in the same world. I like the game, but it is a masterclass on what not to do with fluff. 

What are good ways to deploy lore? Lore found in the box should be mechanically relevant. That means any backstory to set the scene probably shouldn't exceed two paragraphs. Further thematic tie-ins should be interspersed in the rules, conventionally in italics, to explain the 'why' of the actions in the game. Flavor text can also appear on cards or the game board. Pillars of the Earth does a good job describing just enough theme to contextualize game play. 

Lore should also emerge thru art and mechanics. 'Show don't tell' is a great rule of thumb for board games. Written lore may only serve to increase the cognitive load if done wrong. Don't tell me your character uses a bow staff expertly, show me in the art and mechanics. The more lore you can deploy in the game components (including the art on the components) the shorter your world setting description can be. That's a good thing, because the truth about lore is that most people will skip it. 

Lore presented in bits and pieces as you learn and play the game creates an emergent narrative. This can also be true across games in the same universe. None of Ryan Laukat's World of Azrium characters had names until it became mechanically beneficial in Roam. Now, pictures of Sleeping Gods seem to show that trend in lore development continuing. The benefit here is that you are only developing the lore you need for each game as it happens. If you are lucky fans engage with your world then you can develop more. Don't put your cart before the horse. If you really just want to write a novel, consider publishing it online instead of in the game box. 

A game is justly criticized for having unnecessary mechanics or components. A good, unified design should contain only elements that support the whole. We must extend that to our lore. Games with just enough lore to function will not restrict the creative development of future games. The lore you build now may not suit your needs for future games. You will be less restricted by it if you don't give players access to all of your world-building.  

Good lore should add to the immersion of play. If it doesn't, it doesn't belong in your game. 

Board Games and the Theatre Arts Perspective Part II

I think I will periodically post in this series various arguments to build my case that board games would benefit from approaching design and production from a theatre perspective, as opposed to a purely product perspective or what have you. 

The board game industry is often portrayed as having been passed and eclipsed by the video game industry. Reproducibility and accessibility, not to mention average price per unit, have a huge affect on this trend. This same trend is one we see with plays and movies. There are many areas where video games have more in common with movies than they do with board games, with many video games becoming essentially interactive movies. 

Perhaps it is unfair to say that board games are more like plays than they are like video games, but looking at the requirements of these two hobbies can perhaps help predict what the board game industry can expect in the future. 

Both plays and board games are analog. If given too much of a tech upgrade they cease to be what they started as. If you film a play, it becomes a movie. A digital board game is by definition a video game. The core of the game is still the same, but the experience has fundamentally changed. 

Plays and board games are both live experiences bounded by a semi-fluid time frame. Unlike movies, the run-time of a play can vary from night to night. Plays and board games both change based on the consumers' input. Not drastically, but that variability is what makes live entertainment so unique. Video games have variability created by consumer input and can often be played with people in a shared room, but the focus is on the screen, so much of the live feel of social interaction is lost. Additionally, video games are not constrained by short time limits. Very few board games exceed eight hours in play time (although that would be short for Diplomacy), but very many video games do exceed eight hours to just finish the main quest line. 

I'm going to move away from video games and movies and just talk about some of the overlap of board games and theatre. Both fields have a high number of hobby practitioners and a much smaller subset of full time professionals. Very few people working full time in either field make an impressive amount of money. Becoming a professional actor or board game designer has a minimum start up cost, which can push out people who aren't privileged with a decent main income or a strong safety net. This tends to show up as a diversity problem in both fields, which is especially embarrassing for theatre in that theatre has been an industry much longer and likes to publicly espouse its liberalness. 

Both board game design and theatre design encourage practitioners to learn a little bit about a lot of areas of study: math, psychology, philosophy, art, history, etc. I have dabbled in the shallow end of structural engineering, computer-aided drafting, graphic design, electrical wiring, literary criticism, event planning, security, facilities management, etc. I'm not qualified to do any of those things full-time as a professional. Complex creative projects require learning a broad set of skills. Psychology is especially interesting. Board game designers talk about player psychology and how to get better feed back from play testers. Someone with a psychology degree can tell you why certain behaviors happen and how to predict player response based on a given stimulus. But actors and directors can tell you how to manipulate your viewer, how to make them cry or laugh or gasp. Tuning the production  to evoke immediate an emotional response is purview of the theatre practitioner. 

In other ways, board games are only just starting to move into areas theatre has been in for a long time. As I have stated before in this blog, there is some confusion in the industry about the rising production values of games. Some people believe the attraction is only the nice art or toy factor. But consider the consumer. Most television shows these days have an expectation of consistency of story, thanks largely to ability of viewers to watch the episodes in intended order. Thirty years ago (or less), this was not the case. Spotting production errors in movies has become a national pastime. Disney's takeover of Broadway has led to higher expectations for production values in musical productions. Consumers of media have increased standards for consistency and detail, which I would argue extends to board games. Ergo, consumers of board games are looking for high production values (good art and components) that display consistency and attention to detail. Integrated design will be the default expectation very shortly in the hobby. Narrative, art, mechanics, and components will all need to feel seamlessly part of a whole. One way theaters do this is by hiring artistic directors. An artistic director in the board game world would be different from an art director. Artistic directors guide every project from the time the company adds it to the production calendar until it is finished. Artistic directors ensure that the project is up to the company's standards of production but also that each element of the production is of equal quality with the others. Right now in board games, the person guiding the product vision seems to be the owner of a publishing company. As companies continue to consolidate and production standards continue to rise, I predict we will see a move toward hiring someone to function as an artistic director in publishing companies. 

I would like to see board game designers viewed as artists and board game production more as collaborative art-making. Designers create experiences much like directors; they build stories like playwrights; they design settings like set designers. To contract a designer is to (hopefully) buy into their design vision. Giving the various artists in a production access to each produces tighter, better final products. This is something baked into theatre, although there are plenty of examples of productions where the artists didn't deign to collaborate and that is also evident in the final product. Limiting the scope of artists' input, however, is vital to meeting deadlines. I have personally been a part of theatrical productions where new large set pieces were added the week of opening. Knowing when to say no or limit input while still fostering collaboration is a delicate balance that some publishers (Stonemeier comes to mind) are better at than others. The easiest way to see a platonic version of all parts serving the whole is to look at designer/artist/publisher Ryan Laukat, who doesn't have to sacrifice artistic vision due to the lack of competing artistic opinions in the process. For the rest of us, treating designers and artists as collaborators on a 'designed experience' is the best way to achieve an integrated design. 

Board games have for many years now been seen as practical problems with somewhat creative solutions. Creative math is still math. Mechanics and components are discussed from an engineering standpoint. Art is seen as either mere flourish or marketing. We have to move away from this. Theatre has plenty of engineering problems, which involve actual engines and programming, not facsimiles. Yet we categorize theatre as one of the arts. I think we have to change how we talk about board games from product development to art production. It's what we're already doing, so we should acknowledge it.