Theme

Discussions of "Theme" was one of the first things I encountered when I joined Board Game Geek and became seriously interested in board games. Video game people don't really talk about theme -- not in the same way the board gamers do. Theme, which is to say, "the game's setting", is important to board gamers. Sure there are plenty of fans of abstract games like "Go" or the "gipf" games, but most of the big time boardgame fans have a thing or two to say about the theme of their games.

The prevailing wisdom is that games that have "a lot of theme", suffer in terms of mechanics and games whose focus is on elegant or clever mechanics tend to have dry or shallow themes. The argument goes that a highly developed theme requires extra rules, extra bits, and extra book keeping throughout the game in order to support the subject matter, while games that have compact and elegant rule-sets must necessarily abstract a lot of the "cool stuff" that goes into making a great theme. All sides acknowledge that there are are games that manage to somehow break this rule and do both or maybe just fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. These are the games that many people hold up as "great".

I've always found something missing in this conversation. Many of the games detracted for having shallow or dry themes, seemed very intriguing to me, while other games that were supposedly rich and detailed in their setting ended up failing to capture my imagination.

Recently the guys over at the "Boardgames to go" podcast had a discussion on theme that introduced me to some cool concepts about theme that are worth exploring. You can listen to the conversation here: [link] and I recommend that you do. The ideas put forth by Greg Pettit and Mark Johnson have real potential but at times the discussion lacks focus. After thinking more on the subject I think I know what's missing.

The basic idea put forth (Primarily by Greg) is that what gamers understand as "Theme" is really an amalgam of two separate qualities. These are "Narrative" and "Metaphor" and they are independent of one another. A game could therefore score strong in narrative and weak in metaphor, or strong in both, or weak in both, or anywhere in between. In the most general sense, metaphor is there to help make the game easier to understand and narrative is there to help make the game fun.

Greg is very clear as to what "Metaphor as theme" means: Metaphor is a measure of whether or not the rules or mechanics in a game make thematic sense. He is less clear about what "Narrative" theme is. Throughout the podcast Pettit seems to say that Narrative theme is basically the game's setting. It's the flavor text -- the writing on the back of the box.

This definition is incomplete, especially if these two categories are to be judged independent of one another. In order to figure out what is missing from this definition, I'll take a well known game and break it down in terms of narrative and metaphor.

For this example I'll take the well known board game "Monopoly". What aspects of Monopoly could be described as theme as metaphor?

In Monopoly the players represent real estate tycoons. Throughout the game they acquire property. If someone spends time on your property, you charge them rent. Charging someone for the time spent on your property scores high on theme as metaphor. If you spend more money on your property in order to upgrade it, you get to charge more rent. This also scores high on theme as metaphor. The movement around the board (which traditionally represents Atlantic City) scores low on metaphor, since your movement is dictated entirely by chance ("I'm sorry Mr. Trump, I know you were interested in Park Place but you rolled an 11 so you'll have to take a look at Baltic Avenue instead").

The narrative theme of Monopoly is: "A game of Real Estate investment where players are trying to make the most money and avoid going bankrupt." The first question to ask is "How do we evaluate the strength of Monopoly's narrative theme?". Metaphorical themes are easy to evaluate, either a rule makes thematic sense or it doesn't (It makes sense that I - as a Real Estate Tycoon - make money off of people staying at my hotels).

One might suggest that the strength of the narrative theme is measured by how engaging or appealing an idea it is. While this is certainly an important thing to consider, it is also entirely too subjective to be reliable. The only thing we are left with as a way to evaluate the Narrative strength of this game's theme is based on how it "feels" at the end of the game. Did I "feel" like a Real Estate Tycoon?

If this is our only method of judging a game's Narrative, than it's hard to imagine a case where the metaphoric theme is weak, while the narrative theme is strong. Imagine that we change the rules to Monopoly. In this alternate version, players who land on an opponents property are required to sing a song. Players can upgrade their properties but only after being sent to jail and the game ends when one person lands on free parking. The metaphors are so weak in this example and it's hard to imagine that this game would "feel" true it's intended setting.

If Pettit's theory is to remain useful it needs further clarification. The narrative theme is ultimately the game's story and a story is based on the actions of it's characters. The narrative theme is not only the game's setting, but it's the actions afforded to the players within the course of play. If we accept that that narrative theme is not only "what this game is about" but also "what the players can do", we have a much more concrete way evaluating it, AND it can remain independent of metaphorical theme. It becomes a more powerful tool for evaluation.

Continuing the Monopoly example with this enhanced understanding of narrative, one asks, "What can I do in a game of Monopoly?". The answer being something like, "You can buy, auction, and trade properties. You can charge rent. You can upgrade your properties. You might go to jail. You might go bankrupt." Notice we are not examining the actual rules or mechanics (which is the realm of metaphor). With this model we can easily separate metaphor and narrative. It basically becomes a question of "what can you do?" and "how do you do it?".

"What can you do?" also gives us a more concrete way to evaluate narrative theme that is less subjective. Ra (as an example) is a game that always struck me as a little dry. The box says that it's a game about expanding power and influence in ancient Egypt, but all that you do in the game is participate in auctions. When you ask, "What do you do in Ra?" and answer "You participate in auctions", you can almost definitively respond with "That has a weak narrative theme".

-ER

Warning Signs: Design Diary part 2

The first play-test for "Warning Signs" went off last week and went pretty well. This is the second time that I've conducted a first play-test (got that?) and it's actually pretty nerve-wracking (even amongst friends). My expectations in these situations are pretty low and I never hope for more than a total melt-down/failure. If the game doesn't break within the first five minutes of play I am prone to call the whole thing a great success!

On this particular occasion there was one game-breaking exploit that was discovered early. I was aware of the potential problem but wanted to see if the players picked up on it. They did. But aside from that, the game was quite playable. Here's a quick rundown on how the play goes:

The game is based primarily on the cards which all have various "warning sign" symbols on them. Cards are dealt to the players which they take into their hands and 10 cards are dealt onto the board as "hazards". Players also have 10 "workers" that they are responsible for. Each player starts with one worker on the board.

All the left over cards are placed in a draw pile and the game begins. Players can pass cards to their left or play cards to hazard spots on the board as long as the card they are playing has a symbol that matches the one on the card on that hazard spot.

Every time a player plays a card to the board, ALL their workers must move one space. If a worker lands on a hazard card, the player has to be able to match one of the symbols on that card to a symbol on a card in their hand. Otherwise the worker is hurt (which counts against the players final scoring)



Players can also draw cards from the draw deck. Each time he does so, he adds another worker from his supply to the board.

Players who manage to get their workers through to the "finish" space will receive bonus points in the final scoring.

There are a few other wrinkles but that's the gist of it except for one crucial part. There are no "turns". With few exceptions, players all act simultaneously and whenever they want to or are able to.

This makes for some satisfyingly frantic game play.

What worked:

My goal in terms of "player experience" was fast and frantic -- manageable chaos. It seemed like the fast and frantic part was well represented here, and there was a healthy serving of chaos to be sure. The manageable part I'm not so sure about.

What needs work:

Players were unable to move a single worker from start to finish. It was too difficult to get them through all the hazards on the board. This seems to be a common theme in my early iterations -- that I make things too hard for my players and the primary goal is largely unattainable.

The main reason for this seems to be that the testers found it too difficult to match the symbols up. This was not necessarily because they were hard to see but more because the matches were too infrequent. I'll need to adjust the cards to fix this.

There were also problems with keeping the board up-to-date. Players naturally had a tendency to take actions quickly but in the wrong order, and missing important steps. For example: Players would frequently place a new worker on the board and THEN grab a new card (when this should really be reversed). Worse still, players would often play a card to the table and fail to move their worker pawns. This is a HUGE problem as it gives players a potential "out" of situations specifically meant to challenge them -- forgetting to move a worker could inadvertently save that worker from harm (it could also rob the player of positive movement towards their goal).

In other words, the "frantic chaos" worked too well and it meant players were unable to keep track of their pieces.

Another potential problem is pacing. Currently there are events in the game that require everyone to stop so that something can be resolved. It's not that this didn't work, but all the stopping and starting might run counter to the play experience I'm trying to engineer.

We also ran into a situation that I had not accounted for involving players who had all their workers out on the board. This was a problem because currently the action of taking a new card from the stack is tied to adding more workers to the board. So I'll have to figure out what to do there.

Lastly there was a big problem with players running out of workers all together (usually because they were all injured). This wasn't really accounted for in my original rules so I decided to just call this trigger for ending the game and commencing with final scoring.

The game played very quickly (another design goal)...about 30 minutes.

So I have some work to do still, but I got a lot of very valuable feedback. For a first play-test I would say "Warning Signs" was a success.