Reconsidering Board Game Design 1/3: Theme VS Mechanic

This thread is the first part out of three thread that will try to reconsider my approach for designing board games. It was split in 3 thread to sort out more easily the replies in each of the thread. And like some other of my thread, it had a good chance of being controversial, so I tried not writing it in the same day (to make sure I was not in the same mood).

To make a story short of my experience as board game designer, I could summarize it like this: Played lot of turn based strategy video games when I was young, the video game industry stopped making them, I found board games as an alternative. Was shocked with the thin theme but impressed by the mechanics. Decided to design board games since easier to do (it looked easier) and no need to make any program to release the game. I have been doing hobby design for at least 8 years and now I am questioning myself of various aspect that will be detailed in 3 threads:

Part 1: Theme vs Mechanic

Part 2: Board vs Video Games

Part 3: Single vs Multi Player

So the first topic look a bit like a battle since the beginning of time. It's like good fighting evil, or light vs darkness. Mechanics and Theme seems to share the same opposition. Some people say that game should be strongly themed, some say "the hell I don't care", etc. As a board game designer, we have in theory various approach, I identified 3 (Mechanics, Theme and Experience), Lewis Pulsipher identified 5 (Theme/Atmosphere, Constraint, Component, Mechanics, Game system/genre), but after some thinking, I think there is only 1 way to approach a game : Mechanics.

It's not that the other methods are not possible. It's just that you just multiply your design time by 5 or 10 times what it would originally take if you had started with mechanics. I have taken a look at my list of design, all the games I have which are can be considered playable (not fun, or balanced, just playable) have been based on mechanics. Also it took in average 5 play test to reach that playable state. While there are games based on theme that I have been thinking about for years and I still don't have a playable prototype. So the question is "Does it worth it putting time on a theme based game idea?".

We all have time constraints in our life and that is a reason why we want to put time to the place it matters most. If theme based board games are taking my time and sending it in a black hole, then I'll spend my time elsewhere. I always have tons of projects ideas and manage to filter (or trying to filter) what really matters. Never thought I could do the same by sorting out my game idea this way. Maybe it should be better just take those theme based game idea and put it in the list of "Thematic game ideas in search of a mechanic".

It seems that it's easier to attach a theme to mechanics than attaching mechanics to the theme. It does not mean that all game should start abstract and the theme should be added later. I do believe that there still need a strong relation with the theme and the mechanic, but you need to have some core rules or a mechanic pool right from the start. Here is an example:

I had a game idea that was about rats invading a house. With just that information, I know what the game will be about, but have absolutely no clue about the mechanics. I could make many kind of rats invading a house, from card games, to rat meeple flicking. But if tell you that the original idea was to call the game "Rats Craft" then we have a completely new situation here because it's a parody of Starcraft. Not only the rats looks probably more cool in your head than before, but since it's also a parody of the board game, I now have a pool of mechanics that I can use. Of course, my game is very different from Starcraft the board game, but there are still similarities. But without a pool of mechanics, I would never have got a playable game. Of course, I took mechanics from other game, but at least I had some foundation to start building something which was the Starcraft pool of mechanics.

When you design a game by theme, you have no foundation, you need to find the material to build one. How do you do that, first mechanic shopping. Look at other similar games in theme or mechanics and try to see what you could borrow. Second, toy play, use game pieces as toys and try to pull out mechanics out of their behaviour. Eventually, you are going to have a game too large to be playable (too much element or concepts you would like) so you need to compress your mechanics through abstraction methods to make them fit on components, or make it playable in a reasonable time frame.

Now I know a lot about that "Compression" when I attempted to convert the master of magic video game as a board game. I even reached to a point where I compared it to trying fitting an elephant in the shoe box. I do like certain abstraction that board games uses to make the game simpler or have a better flow. But there is a difference between compressing an elephant in a container vs compressing it to a shoe box. It could be compared to budget cuts. Even if seen has negative, budget cuts it somewhat positive, because it allow rethinking and optimizing the spending of time and resources so that in the end, you are more optimal. That is OK. But if you have severe budget cuts, then you'll reach a point where you have to shutdown services because simple optimization is not enough.

When you design a game from a theme, most of the time you are going to end up with massive compression, and you are not going to be able to start having a playable game until you have compressed enough. So you end up only putting the elephant trunk in the box and saying "We would have loved to put more but that is all we could fit in". Else you need a limited thematic span, instead of managing a space empire, why not only manage a space station. In fact many space opera game like "Twilight Imperium", "Eclipse", "Galactic Empires", "Empires of the void", "Space empire 4x" all seem to focus on a different aspect of the theme. The god above this game is "Master of Orion" because it has (almost) everything a space opera theme could need, but board games cannot have everything, so they each focus on something different:

-Twilight Imperium focus on Warfare and logistic

-Eclipse Focus on exploration and development

-Empires of the void focus on planet relations and war

-Galactic Empires focus on resources management

-Space empire 4X focus on war and strategic maneuverings.

Each of these games are a part of the great "Master of Orion", but none of them can replace the whole. Attempting to do will either require removing details, or cutting down features and ending up like one of the game above.

So making a strong themed based game seem like a dead end, it's more efficient to borrow mechanics or base yourself on something that exist to build something, rather than trying to search for it. Another solution is to wait to be hit by a genius idea. I wanted to do a game out of a specific theme that had all the elements to be a board game but had no idea of the mechanics. I could have explored various ways to implement the game using toy play or mechanic shopping. But instead I did nothing, it came once to my mind a mechanic I made as a variant for another game. I though it could be interesting to use it with this theme. In a few weeks I had a working game.

But to get strong theme and most of the time detailed games, the only solution seems either through video games or single player games. Which will be my next topics.

Next Thread

http://www.bgdf.com/forum/game-creation/design-theory/reconsidering-board-game-design-23-board-vs-video-games