Why We Play

This article will be the first of a bi-weekly column discussing industry trends, design philosophies, and controversies surrounding our favorite and upcoming tabletop games. In our very first article, we will discuss the what makes board games "fun" and what "fun" means for different people.

Two years ago I played Ticket to Ride for the first time. Everyone at the table enjoyed it and  I bought a copy of the game soon afterwards. A couple weeks later I eagerly put Ticket to Ride on the table with a different group of people hoping to impress them with my brand new game, the result was disappointing. We eventually finished the game but no one really had fun.

Ticket To Ride aka "The boring train game where no one dies" as my group called it

"Fun" is the universal answer to the question why we play tabletop games, but anyone who has had a similar experience as I had with Ticket to Ride can tell you that it is a little more complicated than that. Everyone has a different definition for "fun" and people's definition might even change over time. So while Ticket to Ride might be the perfect game for some, it could be a terrible fit for others. 

Since fun is such a vague term, how can we define it better? How many different kinds of fun are there? These are important questions for both designers and players of tabletop games. Players should know so they can better select games more suited to their own taste, whereas designers need to know so they can make better games for their targeted audience.

Luckily for us, people in the video game industry has done some extensive work on this. Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek published a fascinating paper on game design way back in 2001 and a major portion of the paper was dedicated to define fun. The whole paper is a great read for all the aspiring designers out there, you can also watch an excellent summary of the paper on Penny Arcade's Extra Credit. 

The paper suggest that there are 8 aesthetics that define fun. A good tabletop game could be a combination of several of the aesthetics or just a single core aesthetic done really well. A game with asymmetric play might even allow players to experience different aesthetics in one game. In the list below, I will give a brief definition of each aesthetic, how they relate to board games and some games that best exemplify that aesthetic. 

1. Sensation (Games with Miniatures, Dixit)

Coleman Styker from War Machine Look at it! Look! It's so pretty!
Photo Credit due to Dave Mathis from Flickr

Sensation is the look of your freshly painted miniature, the sound of new dice hitting the table, the touch of a large foldable game board and...the taste of your grass Carcassone tile? Games with a lot of eye candy and high production values would fall under this category. Dixit is an exceptional example of this, the art work is just mesmerizing and is definitely one of the main appeals of the game.

2. Fantasy (Role Playing Games, Battlestar Galatica)

Fantasy is to become something you are not, let it be an agile elf, a powerful wizard or the commander of a spaceship escaping from a Cylon war fleet. Games with fantasy as its core aesthetic are deeply thematic and allows its players to be lost within that theme. While a lot of games have some elements of fantasy in them, the best example of this genre is still role playing games because, well, that's what role playing means.

3. Narrative (Mice and Mystics, City of Horror, Fiasco)

While fantasy allows players to become something they are not, games with narrative focus on telling a story.   These types of games either have really strong characters (Mice and Mystics) or focus on an idea larger than any single character (the human condition in a post-apocalyptic world in City of Horror).

4. Challenge (Agricola, Dominion, Go)

Challenging games can make you feel...like this guy.
Photo Credit due to Isa Barros on Flickr

Challenge is a little complicated to define as it involves both challenge with yourself and challenge with others, in other word, competition. In general though, challenge is about problem solving. Players are presented with a problem and are asked to find the best tools for that problem. I listed Go as a representative, but most abstract and themeless games use challenge as their core aesthetic.

5. Fellowship/Teamwork (Pandemic, Shadows Over Camelot, Resistance)

This what a good Co-Op game feels like
Photo credit due to The National Guard on Flickr

See picture.

6. Discovery/Exploration (The Cave, Lost Valley)

Exploration is a powerful human instinct, but it's a difficult aesthetic to pull off in board games because unlike films and video games, players can see all the pieces to the game even before the game begins. Nevertheless, there are board games that try to simulate the experience of exploration with varying degrees of success. The Cave might be the best game of this genre.

7. Expression (Dixit, Cards Against Humanity, Role Playing Games)

How can you not enjoy this

Games that allow players to express themselves in various ways. The best board games usually have some elements of self expression because it allows players to make meaningful choices. 

8. Submission (Monopoly, Life)

Ever had a really tough day and want to just come home and do some relaxing activity and zone out? That's the appeal of submission. This is your beer and pretzel games where the game occupies minimal amount of your attention through heavy use of luck and lack of decisions and choices.

These games have their place but sadly for a very long time that was all there is to board games. That era lasted so long and the impact was so strong that even today it is hard to convince someone else that there is more to boardgames than Monopoly.

We do not talk about that era.

My first article turned out way longer than I anticipated, so thank you for staying with me until the very end. I hope you enjoyed it.

Coming Up Next Time: "The Great Divide", a related article about aesthetics and 2 words I tried very hard to avoid using.

Lord of Catan

This may have very little to do with the actual board game, but I am a big fan of Frank Kranz and Amy Acker. This seems to be an interesting project, wouldn't hurt to check it out =)

Big Overhaul

It has been a long time since the last update, but we have a new site! New looking, at least.

I am also going to make the blog more consistent and focused, hopefully publishing some thing thought provoking about tabletop games every 2 weeks. I got some exciting ideas mapped out for the future, it should be a fun ride.

Aside from the visual overhaul, I have also been working on prototyping a new game - Hunger. The latest playtesting went really well, you can see the picture below for a sneak peak.

I will be updating with more information soon.

Relic Expedition

Kickstarter Page - Relic Expedition

Every once in a while I see a good Kickstarter game needing a little help reaching their goals, Relic Expedition is one of those games. Their campaign is about 85% there with only 6 days left, so take a look, it could definitely use your help!

In Relic Expedition, you play a explorer in the jungle seeking treasures while navigating your way through difficult terrains and dangerous wild animals. You gain action points by rolling a die, then you can use your actions to either draw useful supplies or explore the board. You win the game by collecting a set of treasures and then safely return to camp. I know, it didn't sound that appealing to me at first either, but there was something peculiar about the game because I kept going back to their Kickstarter page to check on their progress.

Today I figured out the thing that was nagging my attention - it is the idea of exploration. Human have a built-in need to explore the unknown, otherwise we never would've populated all of Earth and set our eyes on the moon and Mars and even beyond our solar system. You can say that our need to explore is an evolved trait that contributed to our success as a specie.

And yet, exploration is an under utilized aesthetic in board games. Sure, there are a lot of games with expanding tiles or drawing cards to represent the unknown. There are even a lot of games that place you in the space frontier or the entrance of a deep dungeon, but none of them give truly give you the feel of exploration, and I say that for two reasons.

1. Usually in those games, you don't have a choice to explore. You have to "explore" to win the game. For example, in Munchkin, you may have to kick down monster doors, that's part of the rule. But in that scenario, is it really exploring? To explore is to make a choice to peek into the unknown knowing that you could find great risk and reward. Without having a choice for the player, "exploration" simply becomes a mechanic that represent the idea of exploration and does not give the feel of exploration.

Relic Expedition give the players that choice: players can either head into the path of unknown, or follow the path of another player knowing that it is safer but the result might not be as rewarding.

2. In other games as you make progress, your either gain items or experience that make you stronger, and therefore you feel more powerful as the game continues. You might start off as a simple human but by the end game you become some kind of alien-kicking-zombie-killing-cyborg-badass, that's cool and all but that's not how exploration works. Can you imagine Indiana Jones or Tintin wielding a machine gun mowing down all the obstacles ahead of them? Exploration is fun and exciting because the explorers are vulnerable to danger, by empowering them, the tension of the unknown is removed and it becomes a different type of appeal.

Tintin with machinegun - Unstoppable

Relic Expedition is a true exploration game in that as players venture into the deep jungle, players face more danger. And since treasures take up space in the backpack, players are often less powerful than when they first started exploring the jungle. This well thought out mechanic is both thematic and stays true to the core aesthetic of the game.

So that's my spiel about the game. Note that I am not saying that this is a better or worse games than games like Munchkin or Dungeon Crawler, but this is a different type of game that's currently under represented in the market and it definitely deserves a look. If you like video games like Skyrim or Shadow of the Colossus because you enjoy riding around and exploring the world, then check out Relic Expedition, it might just be your thing.

Heart Transplant

Today I want to talk to you about board game adaptations of other popular media. Tabletop gaming is a powerful tool, it can create fascinating universes and allow the players to weave their own story within that space. And since tabletop gaming has such variety of mechanics, it has a natural advantage over other forms of media for adaptations. Unfortunately, a lot of big publishing companies have taken this advantage as license to slap any well known copyrighted story on some random game to make a quick cash grab. This is unfortunate for everyone involved, especially the fans of that story who are cheated into thinking the board game will provide them a familiar experience to the story they already love.

Complaints aside though, I want to start with some good, something we as designers should aspire to and study so we can learn how to make it right. This game is not only the best board game adaptation, but probably one of the best board game made of all time - Battlestar Galatica. We can talk a lot about Battlestar Galatica, but for today let's just focus on why it is a good adaptation.

Warning: light spoilers ahead.


The key of adaptation is like a heart transplant. You find the main conflict of your original story, and then you create an environment that can recreate the conflict for your players.

BSG certainly achieves this on the surface. Players take control of characters they are already familiar with on the show. Players strive for the same goals - reaching Earth if you are human and sabotaging the voyage if you are a Cylon. Players also face the same difficulties/opportunities, shortage of fuel, food or population all are losing conditions for the humans. Externally the humans are facing seemingly insurmountable Cylon fleets and they have to make some tough choices just to escape. By aligning its goals and mechanics with the TV show, BSG not only created a familiar world for the fans, it also reduced the learning curve as the fans will feel intuitive about how situations should be dealt.

The heart of the BSG show is the tension between humans and sleeper Cylons. The BSG portrays this well through the hidden loyalty mechanic and give Cylons plenty of chance to secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) to sabotage the humans. The result of all this is that the players feel immersed in the universe of Battlestar Galatica. Players begin to think and act like the characters of the show - throwing wild accusations around, trusting the people they should not, etc. Players are not intentionally doing this to role play, but because the game is gently guiding them to do so. As a true test to the level of immersion, players can try re-imagine their gaming experience as an episode in the show, it wouldn't at all be out of place.

Keep in mind the three elements below that makes BSG a good adaptation, with the third being the hardest to implement but also the most important:

1. Alignment of goals (mechanics)
2. Environmental Immersion (thematic integration of mechanics)
3. Recreating the key conflict (player dynamics)

In the future, we will contrast BSG with some unsuccessful adaptations by evaluating them using the three elements above as metrics. Hope you guys will find it interesting!

Hunger

I've been working on a very cut throat social deduction game partially inspired by this Penny Arcade Extra Credit video on "Beyond Fun". If you have not seen the video before and got five minutes to spare, the video has some very insightful commentaries on the video game industry and the current trend on game design. I highly recommend a quick look.

The game I am working on is called "Hunger". If it works as intended, it will tell a powerful story through the dynamics of the game reminiscent of some historical events occurred not too long ago in human history. So without further ado, the game:

Hunger

The Rules

The Cards

The Printing Friendly Cards

Would you be interested in play testing this game? Let me know what you think!

The Rules Can Set You Free

I recently discovered Radiolab and have been listening to it every chance I get. It's a fantastic and free educational podcast that talks about everything you can think of. So imagine my happiness when I found the episode they made on games. You can find the entire episode here, but my favorite section is "The Rules Can Set You Free" featuring Alison Gopnik where she talks about the tension between imaginative freedom and rules in game design.



To give a quick summary, Alison noticed that kids engage in two very different style of playing depending on their age and environment. Three year olds would play through imagination or pretend play, tea party, princess on the moon, pillow fort, etc. As the kids get a little older and interact more with other kids, their playing would revolve around rules like freeze, tag and various war games. The main topics of discussion around this period becomes what is yours, what is mine, what move is allowed, what the time restriction is, and most importantly, what is fair.

The combination of imaginative freedom and rules is what makes a good game. In table top speak, imaginative freedom is world creation based on theme and mechanics while rules are the components and flow of the game that restrict what you can and cannot do. So the next time you evaluate or design a board game, imagine yourself transported to a new world and the size of your world depends on the number of possible scenarios allowed by the rules. If you are playing a simple games like checkers, you can probably see the edge of your world without trying very hard. But when you like how the world looks and cannot see an end, you are probably in for a great ride.

The quote I'd like to leave you with is from the first section of the podcast where Stephen Dubner (the host of Freakonomcs Radio) discuss why people are so passionate about sports, I think you'd agree with me that the following quote is equally, if not more so, applicable to table top games.

"It’s a proxy for real life but better, it renews itself, it’s constantly happening in real time, there are conflicts that seem to carry real consequences but at end of the day don’t. It’s war where nobody dies. It’s a proxy for all our emotions and desires and hopes, I mean, heck, what’s to not like about sports table top games."