More theme - yay or nay?

What do we need a theme in a game for? If it’s a Eurogame, we probably need it to help out in the learning process a little bit, and to not be in the way when the learning is over. And if the theme ever rears its ugly head too much, things may get suddenly worse.

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Thematic Eurogames certainly exist. The problem here is that depending on who you ask, what is and is not thematic differs significantly. A game considered super-thematic by some, is dry and completely devoid of any theme to others. Just look at Lords of Waterdeep, that was both praised for a high level of immersion (for a Eurogame), and bashed for being a soulless cube pusher, thinly layered with a Dungeons & Dragons theme.

It’s obvious that to an extent it is what we like or dislike that makes us consider a game thematic or dry. Some specific elements work better to anchor us in what a game is supposed to depict. For example, I find Shipyard (a very abstract abstract Eurogame by Vladimir Suchý) thematic despite having to work with several different rondels as well as a pile of disassociated mechanisms working in the game, simply because the goal is to build ships – and build them on a board, using tiles that make the final outcome look like an actual ship.

However, sometimes one of the design goals for a game is to more accurately depict whatever the game is about. And this means introducing rules that would “simulate” some real-life phenomenon or mechanism, with a possible outcome of making a game that is more “realistic” – and often less of a solid game.

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Among many games Martin Wallace has designed over the years, few have been bashed as much as Tinners’ Trail – a light Eurogame about mining and selling tin in 19th century Cornwall. Wallace (by his own admission) was aiming to create a game that could accurately show the volatility of the 19th century market, which is why he introduced a dice based mechanism that would change the price of tin from turn to turn – sometimes significantly. What he actually did is design a game that was quickly dismissed by many hardcore Eurogamers – or immediately house-ruled to make it more strategic – and probably less realistic.

The question of realism is one we actually tackle on a regular basis. Should a game be more balanced, more well-rounded, and less “realistic” to be considered better? Or should it be maybe a bit less of a solid game, but slightly more thematic? Until now we’ve been walking the “more solid” path, but we are very curious to know what you think.

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Perfect to a Fault

Last time I talked about how most games can be at least partially broken by exceptionally smart players. And although it may seem that it is the geniuses game designers should aim to please the most, the truth is that they are not the biggest threat to how we perceive games. On the contrary, it is the idiots that should be feared.

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Let me start by saying that I really do not mean to offend anyone – at least not without offending myself as well. The truth is each of us may become a boardgaming idiot from time to time due to various circumstances. In my case, I managed to come through as a complete dumbbell during my first game of Agricola.

It was a few years ago, during a convention, right in the middle of a graveyard shift I was assigned to staff the games room. We started the game around 4.30 and by the time it came to an end, roughly three quarters of my brain bailed on me, deciding that whatever usually governs breathing can hold the fort, while all the other little grey cells will go to sleep. Thus, it should come as no surprise that I scored way below zero, with a single pasture, three bags of wheat and a (probably extremely underfed) pig to show for all my heroic struggles.

I do not remember all of the mistakes I made, but I can easily recall the guy who taught me the game, as he gazed at me triumphantly, counting his precious points, thinking that I was probably somebody’s brother, who (by the looks of him) is a drummer in a thrash metal band nobody listens to, duped into doing a job no sane convention attendee would ever want to just do out of their own volition. So, in short, I was the designated idiot for that game.

So, you're the idiot that ruined that other guy's game.

The real problem with us idiots is that we are also able to break a game – as I clearly broke Agricola for one other player at the table on that faithful night. My erratic movements made it impossible for him to form a consistent strategy and between me doing random things and the game teacher performing at the peak of his abilities, that other player felt that the game structure gave him no chance to do anything significant, thus deeming it vastly underwhelming, if not outright broken.

All of that meant that by performing erratically, making really silly moves, doing what no intelligent player would ever do I transformed the game (for one player) into an excruciating experience, either by testing the mechanisms until they finally give way, or by making the game underperform severely due to my inconsistency and counter productiveness. And although it should be easy to differentiate between an experience of suffering through a game diminished by poor player decisions, and a broken design, the reality is that often it simply is not. And I am pretty certain of that, being a few times on the business end of such an unpleasant experience.

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This is exactly what happened to me with Mag*Blast, a light card game about shooting lasers and making silly noises, right after it was played with two people who decided to make it a full on strategy game, killing the fun for everyone else and proving that there was one clear way of winning the game. A similar thing happened to my wife, as she played Garden Dice with someone who decided to adapt a strategy as aggressive as humanly possible, which meant that, while having no chance at achieving victory, he made the whole game a painful slog for everyone else at the table.

Now, I would lie if I said that there is no space between the idiots and the geniuses. There is and most of us actually inhabit it on a daily basis. It is full of people smart enough to understand and play board games proficiently, but either not quite as bright as the brightest, or just never bothered to calculate and optimize everything, choosing to go with their gut for the sake of what they perceive as fun. And it is this exact group most designs should probably be aimed at.

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Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that dumbing down is the way to go, as this is not what gamers expect and, for obvious reasons, appreciate. What I am saying is that a game should strive to be fun even if not all moves are optimized, because it will mostly work in an imperfect environment. It will never be idiot-proof, as destroying a game is sometimes as simple as swapping the original objectives for a set of few arbitrary ones (like becoming “the master of all wizards” in Lords of Waterdeep, or deciding to never trade in Settlers of Catan) or just being dead tired. But a design should be able to withstand some sub-optimal play without immediately handing over the victory to whoever uses a strategy that can be countered only with a very specific response, executed flawlessly and perfectly timed.

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What I am also not saying is that games for the exceptionally smart should be immediately discarded. However, we need to remember that they have a tendency to be misjudged by gamers not willing to delve deep enough. A prime example of such a misunderstood game is The Great Zimbabwe, which has an amusing feature of becoming longer with every subsequent play. The first games will usually be surprisingly short, won by a player who manages to seemingly break the game by introducing a strategy that seems unbeatable. That might earn the game a “broken” status right out of the gate and move it from the shelf to the trade pile, without giving it a second chance.

It is only later that players discover that there is a counter for every possible approach and that the first victories are usually a matter of other players’ negligence rather than anyone’s superior performance. But that requires everyone to be willing to play The Great Zimbabwe again, and that, as my own experience clearly indicates, is by far not a given.

So what should a designer do in order to make a game that would satisfy the most people? In a perfect world, he or she should aim at the brightest, hoping the rest will see how solid their design really is. In the real world, aiming for the smartest gamer should also be acknowledged, just as much as remembering that a game should be attractive to all others – even some of the idiots. After all, we learn, we become smarter, we sleep off the wear and tear of pulling an all-nighter at a convention or we are told to stop acting like a jerk – and we become the masters of the games we enjoy the most. But for this to happen, we also need a chance to enjoy the game right from the start, even if we err on our way.

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The Agent and the Narrator

According to an old joke about Talisman, the first prototype of the game was actually a single six-sided die. The players would sit down staring at it for four hours, and then roll off to see who won the game.

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Obviously, the joke is still being told by the people who do not enjoy the overall experience offered by the cult classic. They seem uninterested in the heroic stories created by hours of rolling dice, moving around the board and then either drawing a card, or... rolling more dice. And it does not necessarily mean that they hate wizards, dragons and magical swords (although some of them actually do). What it does mean is that they are unsatisfied with the level of agency offered by the game.

Last week I said that a certain level of randomness seems to be a required element of any adventure game. I think we can agree now that if everything can be weighed and measured before the game, there will be no adventure – only an exercise in optimization or, in other words, a German style game. Randomness is, obviously, not only an element of an adventure game. Even Agricola randomizes some of its elements, but only up to a certain extent. The players are first treated to a random distribution of cards, and during the game they have to take into account the fact that the appearance of some action spaces is random – although this randomness is also very limited.

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It is actually quite easy to get randomness right in a Eurogame. Just remember a simple rule: randomness first, decisions later. Shipyard introduces this element by giving players scoring tiles before the game, just like Lords ofWaterdeep which – although plagued with the quest cards random draw which felled many a strategy – supplies each player with a lord card that tells them what they will score points for.

Adventure games are, however, slightly more difficult to calibrate. In optimization games agency is king – but it is narrating a story that adventure games are all about. And here, it seems, erring on the side of caution means that it is better to make a game more random, than one that can be fully planned from the first turn and then flawlessly executed. Does that mean that all adventure games will inevitably boil down to, more or less, Talisman clones?

Certainly not, as some designers have already proven – with Mage Knight being the most recent example of an adventure game that really puts the player in the driver’s seat, while sometimes heavily taxing their little grey cells. What is important to take note of here: randomness is not gone, but it still precedes all decisions made by a player on their turn – just like in many Eurogames.

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As a fan of games with a clear narrative arc, I enjoyed my time with Mage Knight, just as much as I enjoyed a few dozen games of Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, where a random card draw created challenges for players to deal with using their custom made decks and (on a more turn-by-turn basis) their hands of cards. I was, however, surprised that many adventure game fans had a completely different view of those two games, finding them dull, too complicated or simply “not really adventure games”.

All in all, getting an adventure game design right is not only about creating a set of working mechanisms, but about (and perhaps even more so) balancing the player agency and the game’s narrative aspect. It is obvious a single design will not satisfy every gamer, which makes this balancing act, ever interesting from a design standpoint - and exciting for gamers open to experiencing new ideas within their favoured genre.

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