I have been placing some thoughts about flexible games. By flexible, I mean games that could easily be modified or expanded. I'll take 2 different examples for this post which comes out of my closet which are different enought to attept finding similarities between both.
Arkham Horror: Many adventure game has the flexibility property. Runebound could probably fit in there too. The fact that there are so many expansions, so many variant and home made expansion proves this flexibility. Objectives could be changed, new concepts can be added, new ways of playing the game could be used. It's almost like if the game came with a sandbox of components and you could play it in anyway you want.
Rune Age: A different kind of game, but Rune Age is quite flexible due to the many possible scenarios. Being a deck building game, new cards could be added to the game quite easily. It might not be as flexible as arkham since it is less story driven, but still, offer a lot of options for a game of this kind.
Another game that comes to my mind is "Kingdom Builder" where each game is pretty unique. In that case, it is much more a euro game with various game play. There is not a high amount of unique events, items, or locations to encounter like the 2 previous games.
Why use flexible design
Now I have been wondering when should it be the best option to use flexible design and does it give that many advantages. Of course expandability is the main reason for flexibility. I imagine that is the case of many LCG. But even if expandable, the gameplay could remain the same like it's the case of many CCG, LCG. Flexible games seems to introduce new gameplay methods.
Like in rune age, you have cooperative, competitive scenarios. Sometimes you need to attack players, sometimes you need to gather power. So each scenario is a kind of new game. It's a bit like my fairy land game idea where different adventures could be played with the same components. Where each adventure is a new game. So you could end up playing a mystery investigation, a racing or a tower defense game with the same components.
Now I was wondering if it could be used in any kind of game. I was thinking that for example, could a flexible design could be used in a Master of Magic like board game. It could be interesting, but I think why it could work is due to the amount of possible variety such theme could offer. Adventure games has almost an infinity of story situation that could happen making it very expandable. A fantasy 4x game could also have a huge amount of events and locations that could be encountered or explore. The objectives of the game could also be changed from a game to another depending on the world you are in (Take control of the council, control X nodes, eliminate a player, etc).
Maybe such design could be compared to many MMORPG video game where they start with a small world and expand while the game is beign played instead of doing everything from start. If the same method could be applied to board games, then the core of the game could maybe be accomplished faster making it possible to get a playable game sooner. It could be easier to develop this ways, but the only thing you need to make sure is not shoot yourself in the foot to hinder any further expansions later.
How to use flexible design
Which brings me to the how to design flexible games. Many flexible games seems to use similar components and mechanics, let's check them out:
Cards, tokens or movable components: Rune age and Arkham horror has a huge amount of cards. That has the effect of making them easily replacable or movable on the board. So maybe a key is to keep everything on those flexible components, or try to avoid fixed components like a map. Or course you could have a modular map, but even then it restrict the possible gameplay changes than if locations were on cards.
Core Rules: Most of these games seem to have a basic set of core rules which is very thin a bit like many CCG rule book which are pretty thin, but where the game expand with the text on the cards.
Text abilities: Which introduce to a huge amount of text abilities. It also means that the area of effect of the game must be large enough to allow an high amount of text ability. It should be possible to extend the area of effect by adding new components or concepts to the game. Else you could run out of possibilities too soon.
Resources: I think that all these games has a specific set of resources defined in the basic rules that will stay there for the whole life of the game. Resource management could indeed be an important part of the core mechanics. But even rune age added a new "power" resource for a specific sscenario. So it could be possible to add new resources later.
The only things I fear is that planning ahead for the future might be more complex to design than planning a whole game now. Unless there are some tricks to make sure your game is expandable even if you have no clue how it is going to end up. Else having an area of effect to small could lead to a dead end with no possible expansion.
So here are a few questions:
Do you think flexible games could be used in much more areas or only to expandable games?
Do you have any methods for making games more flexible?
Do you see other common points between flexible games?
Are flexible game easier to design? Especially for epic game which could seem overwhelming to finish?
But having a game that is not flexible, it first needs some modifications?
I am trying to tame a large beast by cutting the game in smaller parts and developping parts by parts.
It's for a master of magic board game that I try to use a more flexible approach to make it easier to devellop. I realised that many elements in the game like: Cities, special locations, encounter events, spells, could have as much variety as an adventure game. Also new mechanics like espionage, events, guilds, mirror world could be added later for additional gameplay, but are not necessary for basic game play.
Another ting I realised is that expandable board games gives you the choice to add or change rules of the game. You are not forced to use all expansion material. Arkham Horror use the same philosophy where each add on is modular and can be added on demand.
That is another interesting aspect. If the core game attract a lot of interest, then there is a motivation to put more time to make the project evolve while having a playable game. But if I design everything in 1 shot, it demands too much work and it could be a waste of time if the game fails.
I love self contained games, but maybe for more ambitious projects, it could be more interesting to devellop the game in parts and get feedback while develloping.
I am thinking to use a toy play approach for this kind of design. I would create components with values and information without having much clue about the mechanics behind them. Then start playing with it and see what rules I can come up with. Maybe certain values will be unused for now and used later in an expansion module. It's a bit like a sandbox game or a piece pack where I create pieces and then rules are made out of them.
For Example: A city could give special resources have a value with it. The value could mean anything: Quantity, difficulty to harvest. It could be used as a value: it's worth X, or be used for randomness: need to roll over or under X. Or not be used at all, but it will be there for further expansion or user variant. So you need to leave door opens to allow various reinterpretation of the components.
Even if most expandable game tend to be designed to make a lot of money. My objective is really to make the design of the game more easily by splitting it in multiple parts and leaving doors open.
True.
I know that certain people hate expansion and will never buy a game like AH that is designed to be expanded.
Again, most of time time, I try to make a self contained game. I find game with expansion just a way to rack up more money. But here I want to have a different approach. I want something more of an open game a bit like an MMORPG has the flexibility to add new worlds, class, skills, monsters, etc.
Comments to be continued later ...