Designing board game mechanics
Jan. 6th, 2019 10:04 pmMy next board game project is still probably writing up the demon-summoning game into a playable form, but I still keep getting enticed by other ideas. Here's one I had last week, which didn't go anywhere, but I thought was an interesting illustration.
I was trying to think of games that are a natural competition, but a playful, not very cut-throat competition, and suddenly visualised little baby goats playing king of the castle on some bales of hay.
Ideas quite often come to me that way, I think of a concept, often imagining how the box would look, how the game would *feel*. It doesn't normally come to completion like that, but it's an inspiration I work from, or sometimes, after playing with a game for a while, it "clicks" again and I think of an idea I like more based on what I'd already been doing, like when the "cast-away game" became a "planet of monsters" game with greatly evolved mechanics.
It doesn't always work like that, I also often have ideas for mechanics, that I try various flavours on, although I can rarely graft a theme on completely, it's so much nicer when the mechanics reflect the theme, even if the basic gameplay is fixed, then in having cards that represent concepts, not just an arbitrary match-up between "thing you might do with this flavour" and "action you might do with this mechanics" and keep constantly asking "wait, who gives you coins and dice, is it the butler or the vintner?"
I also had an idea for a mechanic, something like, you have a two-sided step pyramid of bales with a goat on each level, and you can do jumping stunts to show off and/or try to reach a higher level. I even had an idea for a mechanic, basically, you have two power bars, one for physical energy, one for prestige, doing any stunt uses up energy, but you only lose prestige if you try and fail, so if you do a jump-off with a goat on a higher level by each playing a stunt card from your hand of a certain difficulty, the idea is to try to arrange it so you usually win on prestige and don't have to actually do the stunt, except occasionally, when you do it awesomely and fill up on prestige. And there's a salt lick on the lowest level to recharge energy.
That's far from a complete mechanic, even in one paragraph there's several contradictory ideas, but it had the general sort of feel I wanted, and I trust my intuition that those were the bits that were notable about it, and in order to make it work like a game, I could probably just fill in fairly standard mechanics that work in other games in the gaps.
But what interested me was that what I wanted was for the game to actually feel like baby goats. That means that players should usually be encouraged and rewarded for playing fairly impulsively, sating themselves on good cards/resources and then spending them freely for impressive results -- you might say, the play should feel "fun", which sounds silly since all games are supposed to be fun, but the point is, it should feel fun and carefree all the way through, as opposed to rewarding strategic depth, or well-judged gambles, as many games do.
That resonates with advice from Mark Rosewater about Magic: The Gathering. Landfall, a mechanic which gives bonuses when you play a land, naturally feels fun to play whether or not it's a good mechanic. That doesn't last, if you play enough, you'll eventually learn when a mechanic works well and when it sets you back and emotionally respond to those situations instead of the out-of-the-box experience. But for quite a while, it just feels fun to play with, because you usually wanted to play a land each turn *anyway*, and landfall gives you an extra bonus for doing so, so it feels like you're going with the flow and everything is easy. You might say the same thing about tribal: there's lots else, but the basic concept of playing "as many goblins as you can" is just nice.
So how to capture that in board game mechanics? One thing is, reduce the pressure, have the moments of greatest emotional resonance reflect dramatic changes that are necessary to proceed, but not necessary significant advances towards winning. That means that everyone gets excited when you do a double back flip and gain a level, and players are more drawn to that, and less drawn to playing conservatively and hoarding resources for a longer-term strategy. Although doing the cool things should usually be the sensible strategy: players get unhappy when what's fun is different to what's effective because they have to choose and resent people who choose differently.
Also, walk a middle path of some strategy but not too much, some randomness but not too much, guide people into planning for the next turn or two, planning something that will usually be successful (so they feel good) but that they're not encouraged to obsess over whether a particular thing is the best for the long game or not (because if they can do that, it will draw attention away from the part of the game I want to be most interesting).
Of course, it's hard to make that happen in practice. Lots of board games have a different feel the first game from the fifth game, and lots you never play that many times at all. But that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of.
I do usually aim for SOME strategic complexity. I always wanted Toy Factory to be more strategic, even though most players enjoyed the "basically think one turn ahead" gameplay.
And in the end, I stopped there with the baby goat game -- I didn't have any more ideas that seemed more interesting than what I'd already thought of elsewhere. I did note it down in the file I return to for inspiration, because who knows when those ideas will come in useful later.
I was trying to think of games that are a natural competition, but a playful, not very cut-throat competition, and suddenly visualised little baby goats playing king of the castle on some bales of hay.
Ideas quite often come to me that way, I think of a concept, often imagining how the box would look, how the game would *feel*. It doesn't normally come to completion like that, but it's an inspiration I work from, or sometimes, after playing with a game for a while, it "clicks" again and I think of an idea I like more based on what I'd already been doing, like when the "cast-away game" became a "planet of monsters" game with greatly evolved mechanics.
It doesn't always work like that, I also often have ideas for mechanics, that I try various flavours on, although I can rarely graft a theme on completely, it's so much nicer when the mechanics reflect the theme, even if the basic gameplay is fixed, then in having cards that represent concepts, not just an arbitrary match-up between "thing you might do with this flavour" and "action you might do with this mechanics" and keep constantly asking "wait, who gives you coins and dice, is it the butler or the vintner?"
I also had an idea for a mechanic, something like, you have a two-sided step pyramid of bales with a goat on each level, and you can do jumping stunts to show off and/or try to reach a higher level. I even had an idea for a mechanic, basically, you have two power bars, one for physical energy, one for prestige, doing any stunt uses up energy, but you only lose prestige if you try and fail, so if you do a jump-off with a goat on a higher level by each playing a stunt card from your hand of a certain difficulty, the idea is to try to arrange it so you usually win on prestige and don't have to actually do the stunt, except occasionally, when you do it awesomely and fill up on prestige. And there's a salt lick on the lowest level to recharge energy.
That's far from a complete mechanic, even in one paragraph there's several contradictory ideas, but it had the general sort of feel I wanted, and I trust my intuition that those were the bits that were notable about it, and in order to make it work like a game, I could probably just fill in fairly standard mechanics that work in other games in the gaps.
But what interested me was that what I wanted was for the game to actually feel like baby goats. That means that players should usually be encouraged and rewarded for playing fairly impulsively, sating themselves on good cards/resources and then spending them freely for impressive results -- you might say, the play should feel "fun", which sounds silly since all games are supposed to be fun, but the point is, it should feel fun and carefree all the way through, as opposed to rewarding strategic depth, or well-judged gambles, as many games do.
That resonates with advice from Mark Rosewater about Magic: The Gathering. Landfall, a mechanic which gives bonuses when you play a land, naturally feels fun to play whether or not it's a good mechanic. That doesn't last, if you play enough, you'll eventually learn when a mechanic works well and when it sets you back and emotionally respond to those situations instead of the out-of-the-box experience. But for quite a while, it just feels fun to play with, because you usually wanted to play a land each turn *anyway*, and landfall gives you an extra bonus for doing so, so it feels like you're going with the flow and everything is easy. You might say the same thing about tribal: there's lots else, but the basic concept of playing "as many goblins as you can" is just nice.
So how to capture that in board game mechanics? One thing is, reduce the pressure, have the moments of greatest emotional resonance reflect dramatic changes that are necessary to proceed, but not necessary significant advances towards winning. That means that everyone gets excited when you do a double back flip and gain a level, and players are more drawn to that, and less drawn to playing conservatively and hoarding resources for a longer-term strategy. Although doing the cool things should usually be the sensible strategy: players get unhappy when what's fun is different to what's effective because they have to choose and resent people who choose differently.
Also, walk a middle path of some strategy but not too much, some randomness but not too much, guide people into planning for the next turn or two, planning something that will usually be successful (so they feel good) but that they're not encouraged to obsess over whether a particular thing is the best for the long game or not (because if they can do that, it will draw attention away from the part of the game I want to be most interesting).
Of course, it's hard to make that happen in practice. Lots of board games have a different feel the first game from the fifth game, and lots you never play that many times at all. But that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of.
I do usually aim for SOME strategic complexity. I always wanted Toy Factory to be more strategic, even though most players enjoyed the "basically think one turn ahead" gameplay.
And in the end, I stopped there with the baby goat game -- I didn't have any more ideas that seemed more interesting than what I'd already thought of elsewhere. I did note it down in the file I return to for inspiration, because who knows when those ideas will come in useful later.