 http://bit.ly/2fYXZ7q Good Day Internet! This week we’re going to discuss ways to approach randomness and uncertainty when designing games to bring about tension and engagement. For the sake of consistency we will be using the definitions of uncertainty and randomness found in “Game Elements: Uncertainty” by Teale Fristoe. As per the article, randomness is a subset of uncertainty--where uncertainty is when there is at least one unknown for at least one player. Randomness is defined as something that is left completely up to chance (which still causes uncertainty for players). For instance, in a game of Werewolf roles are assigned randomly causing uncertainty amongst the players of who could be on which team. However, once the roles are assigned, randomness is taken out of the equation, but the uncertainty remains due to an information imbalance. You know your role and that will not change throughout the game, or when you are revealed, so your role is no longer random. However, other players don’t know who you are and so although the information has been revealed to you, making it no longer random, your role is hidden to the other players causing uncertainty amongst them. This distinction may not seem to be very important and a little bit like splitting hairs, but its power will come into play when we discuss tension and engagement. Before we do though, we need to discuss another set of terms that sometimes blur together: input and output randomness.  http://bit.ly/2g0viov Input randomness is when a random event occurs and afterwards players get the chance to react. It can be part of the setup of a game, similar to roles being randomly assigned in Werewolf, or it can be part of the beginning sequence of a turn/round like rolling dice in King of Tokyo. Output randomness is when the randomness defines the course of the game or cannot be counteracted by the players. A good example of this is roll and move mechanics in games like Monopoly or Trouble. However, output randomness is not equivalent to a game being void of choice. Players may still make choices and weigh probabilities before a random output. An example of this is rolling for combat (or almost anything else) in Dungeons and Dragons (DnD). Sometimes these lines blur though, especially when a turn or game can end on a random outcome that would otherwise be reacted to. In Pandemic, players are both reacting to what has happened from the last infection cards drawn and are planning for what could happen when the next infection cards are drawn (a mostly random event that may end the game). Therefore drawing infection cards can be considered both an input and output randomness event. If we take another look at the King of Tokyo example (or Yahtzee), the last roll of a player’s turn (when no more rerolls are left) is an output randomness event; the player is stuck with whatever they’ve rolled. Otherwise, when rerolls are available and players can decide which dice to “lock in” rolling is a input randomness event.  http://bit.ly/2gj5oQa Some designers (including myself until recently), believe that input randomness is more palatable and satisfying for players than output randomness. What really matters though is how many meaningful choices are made, how they are presented, and the audience you’re going after. Figuring out your strategy for a game of Scythe after seeing what factions, player mats, and objectives are in play is fun; equally as fun though is slaying a mighty dragon with a tree branch because you rolled a critical (an unexpected outcome only possible by a random output). Regardless if you have input or output randomness in your game, it is important to make sure there are meaningful choices either before or after the random event. Again, this depends on the type of game you’re making, but even in a very light-hearted luck-driven game the few choices made should be meaningful. For instance, Dead Man’s Draw makes every draw important as almost every card is either changing what you’re doing on your turn or will make you bust. Dice-driven roleplaying games, like DnD, can get away with randomness determining quite a bit of what your character is and isn’t able to do because they create a world where you can do almost anything. Additionally, they provide almost all the data needed to weigh your options before making a risky decision right in front of you on your character sheet. Yahtzee on the other hand makes sure that your choices become less meaningful as the game goes on. Although you can choose which dice to keep and which to reroll, eventually the game forces you to focus on a shrinking list of objectives. This means as the game goes on you begin to notice more and more you’re playing a game of chance.  http://bit.ly/2fYYiir If you want the randomness in your game to bring about tension and engagement one of the best ways to do it is to give the players some information on how a random event will turn out. Social deduction games thrive on the notion that no one else knowing your “random” role creates discussion. The best ones though make sure each player gets a little bit of extra information about the other players’ roles either through gameplay or special abilities (for example, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong). These games don’t rely solely on players making up their own facts through social deduction. Instead, they reveal little bits of information about other players while keeping uncertainty. Pandemic does a fantastic job of presenting randomness to the players in the infection card deck. Drawing a card from a shuffled deck is a random event, and when that random event can determine the fate of the game there is a noticeable level of tension drawing from that particular deck. What increases that tension is if you know the card that ruins your plans is in that deck. Pandemic makes sure you stay at that level of tension with the nasty “Intensify” phase of each Epidemic card. Not only does this give the players the knowledge that the card(s) that can ruin all their plans will be drawn at random eventually, but they know it will happen soon (most likely too soon to do everything they need to). By “revealing” this information about a random event and presenting it in such a fashion that “doom is always around the corner” brings about a level of tension and engagement that is hard to match.  http://bit.ly/2f2nzDL To make your games truly intense and engaging you want to have randomness that is slowly changing with bits of information being revealed along the way so players still have a chance to either plan or react to it in meaningful way. Generally, you want randomness that turns into a strict uncertainty where what is known about the random events will cause players to analyze the opportunity costs of their choices. For example, in a social deduction game, revealing you know a piece of information about another player to hopefully obtain additional intel could be at the cost of giving enough information to the other team to win. In a game like Pandemic, going for cures may make the game easier in the long run, but it may be at the cost of potentially allowing another outbreak waiting in the infection deck to occur. These are the types of decisions that make for great gaming experiences and should be what you strive for when designing. When implementing randomness into a game design it is our belief that making sure players still make meaningful choices while maintaining uncertainty (and not just pure randomness) is the most critical factor in ensuring an engaging game. Whether or not players make those choices before or after a random event only matters for what audience you’re targeting. What do you think though? Are we underplaying the role of input and output randomness in design? Have we forgotten another important element in implementing uncertainty and randomness into a game design? Let us know in the comments. WAIT!!!
Before you go we’ve got some exciting news! From February 24th-26th we will hosting a board prototype convention: Play & Pub in Toronto! We’re still working on the details, but we have just confirmed a couple amazing sponsors (Hasbro Gaming Lab and The Game Crafter) and our first publisher: Kids Table! If you’re a publisher, someone interested in sponsoring the event or just want to know more information, please reach out to us on our “Contact” page or send us an e-mail at DancingGiantGames@gmail.com. For the rest of you, more information will be released soon so make sure to follow us on social media and check back here on the blog! Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin
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 http://bit.ly/2eYvGoD Good Day Internet! Today we’re discussing the importance of designing with the core experience in mind and how properly doing so creates better games. For those who may be unfamiliar with the term “core experience” it’s generally defined as the experience you want your game to provide to players. More specifically, it’s the emotions and feelings you want your game to provoke as determined by its mechanics and the way the theme is presented. It should be noted, however, that games that have the same theme and similar mechanics can still have different core experiences. For instance, Axis & Allies and Memoir ‘44 are both World War II games with dice driven combat, but the experiences and feelings provoked in each are different. Axis & Allies focuses on the stresses of managing a large war machine, and Memoir ‘44 focuses on the tactical combat of historical battles. Because of these and other nuances, there is a deeper ‘connection’ to your pieces in Memoir ‘44 than there is in Axis & Allies and the core experiences are different. We’re going to address a common mistake some designers make when asked about the core experience of their game and then we’ll get into how designing with the core experience in mind helps designers create better games.  http://bit.ly/2e5OiDL Some designers define the core experience or the core of a game as the thematic elements and mechanics that have to stay aka are “must-keeps”. Oftentimes when a designer thinks about the core experience in terms of “must-keeps” they tend to list most of the mechanisms and thematic elements currently in the game. As far as we can tell, this tendency is related to the emotional and psychological connection designers have with their designs and people’s natural aversiveness to change. Designers may be averse to change to avoid feeling like they are losing control over their vision and the game they’ve created. However, by limiting the creative space you have to work in, by creating a long list of “must-keeps”, your game will have a tough time growing and developing. It will also be much more difficult for you to accept outside feedback and apply it to your design. Basically, whatever state your game is after the first external playtest is pretty much where it’s going to stay with this kind of fixed mindset. Of course this won’t apply to every designer, but the amount of creative space you can work in is vastly increased by chasing the experience your game creates for players instead of what you want to keep in the game.  http://bit.ly/2fz5FhG One of the other problems with designing based around keeping certain mechanical and thematic elements is that the goal of any changes you make is unclear. Your only goals will be to make a good game and to keep certain elements in your game. The elements you want to keep are already there, so the only real goal you have is to make a good game. That’s so arbitrary and wide open that it’s a nearly impossible target to hit. On the other hand, designing around the memorable experience your game should create gives a very specific goal on how your game should perform and feel. This does open up the game for a lot of possible changes, but when the game is off you’ll know what needs to be added and can start exploring possible design solutions, and when do find the memorable experience you were chasing after you’ll know it. Designing around a core experience may be a difficult challenge at first. As we’ve mentioned, there’s a natural tendency for us to be averse to change and hold on to the thing we’ve created, and there’s also a lot of creative space to work in that may seem overwhelming at first. However, having all that open creative space allows you to experiment with your design in many ways without losing what you liked about the game (assuming you’ve fully embraced designing based on a core experience). You’ll learn a lot about approaching themes and mechanics from unique perspectives which will ultimately separate your game from others like it in the market. All this experimentation has another positive which is you’ll become a better designer. The more you practice and experiment doing something the better you’ll get at it, and game design is no different. But wait, there’s more! Being flexible with your design and experimenting will alleviate some of the anxiety you may have passing your design onto a publisher who will want to develop and tweak your game to fit their lineup.  http://bit.ly/2flzqxx One last note on designing with the core experience in mind; the experience your game creates is going to be somewhat determined by the heuristics held by your playtesters. Being conscious of this may help you decipher why your game may not be performing the way you want it too. For instance, you may have come up with a really cool bidding mechanic that works like regular poker bidding, but you always have make a bid at least once per round. This solution may have been useful to make players feel like they’re forced to do something they don’t necessarily want to do while also making sure everyone is involved each round, but anyone who has played poker will probably be very averse to this change and not enjoy the game. For those players it will be very difficult to get over those habits which will negatively affect their experience. Going against heuristics like this will be tough at best and so you need to be aware that they may be one of your few limiting factors to how you can manipulate a game to provide the core experience you’re looking for.
Before we go, we’ve got a few things to keep you up to date on. First off, Kevin is currently in New Jersey for Metatopia! It’s the first time either one of us will have attended the convention so if you’ll also be attending and spot him expect him to look a little overwhelmed. If you’d like to see what we’ve been working on, feel free to approach him and ask to play a game. Throughout the weekend he will be running playtests of our party word game Grumble. You can find it on the schedule under codes B188, B308, B566, and B724. Also, we’ve been working on organizing another project for the Toronto area that we hope to make an official announcement about soon. Stay tuned for more details! Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin Good Day Internet! Today we’re going to discuss how to design your games to be more inclusive and accessible, because gaming is for everyone. Board games are a format that can attract numerous different kinds of people and bring them together in a social context--this is part of the beauty of board games. It is therefore important to make sure that every person who sits down to play your game has the ability to participate, feel included, and not be put down or offended by your game. Many of the ways to do this are relatively simple, yet often overlooked, forgotten, or disregarded. It’s for these reasons, and others, that we decided to write a few general guidelines to ensure your game is more accessible and fun for everyone.  http://bit.ly/2cDk06D Colour Blind Accessibility We’ve spoken briefly on this topic before, but it’s important to reiterate that a couple simple changes can make your game more accessible. When deciding your colour scheme, especially for player pieces and resources, avoid using similar tones along certain colour spectrums. You should also do your best to limit the number of similar tones you use in your game. Use symbols, patterns, shapes, or other non-colour identifiers wherever possible to differentiate various pieces (once again with a focus on player pieces and resources) as not to rely on the colour being the only differentiating factor (Circular Reasoning is a good example of this). Doing so will (hopefully) guarantee that there will be no confusion for colour blind players.  http://bit.ly/2cKUGkw Language Dependency Your ability to lower the language dependency relies a lot on your game’s complexity. If your game allows it, creating a highly visible icon set will decrease your language dependency; using a well-constructed iconography set for your game can increase the age range of potential players, allow for those with lower reading comprehension skills and dyslexia to have an easier time playing/learning, and make it accessible to those with poor vision by removing small text. Furthermore, it can open up more opportunities for your game to be played by players who don’t speak your language without having to translate your rules. Of course, this isn’t a way you would advertise your game, but there are people who, despite language barriers, will want to play your game. If they really want to play it, then chances are they will buy it and try to figure out one way or another how to play. Having an easy to understand iconography set will help to assist in translating your game without actually having to translate your game. Be careful though, bad iconography will decrease the accessibility of your game for everyone (not just the groups listed above). No published games in particular come to mind, but we’ve definitely seen some prototypes with confusing icons that made us feel like we were deciphering a forgotten ancient language.  http://bit.ly/2dbn8f4 Character Diversity and Portrayal This topic is a sore spot for a lot of people and there are a wide range of topics, discussions, and schools of thought regarding these issues. We’re going to do our best to try and stick to the most basic steps you can take to make sure your game appears open and accepting to all people regardless of how you may group them. Before we do though, if your game involves players being a type of animal/focuses around animals (like Zooloretto) or has a strict/rich historical content to it then these guidelines aren’t really going to help you. For the most part, people are highly uneducated on the variations in physical appearance of different species, or sexes, of a particular animal, and historical games cannot change the past...unless they decide to re-imagine/re-write history in some fashion in which case you should definitely try to follow the guidelines below while keeping true to historical contexts.  http://bit.ly/2cHNtyt If your game has characters, playable or not, you should aim to include as much diversity of the human species as possible in a respectful manner. This includes sexes, ethnicities, religions, beliefs, lifestyles, occupations, mental health, disabilities, and anything else you can think of. Additionally, every character should visually have a similar presence about them and appear fit to take on the role/task as defined by your game. No character(s) should appear to be less valuable (either in general terms or in direct relation to their role in the game) than any others as defined by their looks, stylization, abilities, or powers. As an example, Allysha appreciated the job done by the artists behind Dead of Winter for their inclusion of a diverse group of characters and unbiased stylization. It’s definitely not perfect, but it does a pretty good job and is good example of what you should be aiming for. These character guidelines are based around the idea that players want to believe that they could take on a role in your game. Sometimes that means they want to fantasize about who they could be and sometimes they want a character they see as representing the real them within the context of your game. We want you to do your best to avoid limiting the potential of a player identifying a character as themselves, and avoid them thinking that the character that best represents them is useless or portrayed in a bad light. By providing the diversity of characters we mentioned and making every character’s stylization, presence, and competence the same, or at least very similar, creates a smoother transition for a larger number of people of slipping into the game.  http://bit.ly/2cL03jE Final Thoughts
Tabletop gaming is meant to bring people together in a social context without anyone being ostracized. Anything that singles out a person or group of people in a negative connotation doesn’t belong in your game regardless of how it does that (unless following true historical contexts). Of course, there are games whose sole success is based around being “politically incorrect” and undermining people. Games like Cards Against Humanity have created a fad of discriminating, excluding, or finding ways to laugh off saying horrible things in gaming (although similar serious issues were present before Cards Against Humanity). Simply put, it should not be that way if creators wish to have an open and willing community. The above guidelines are little tools to remember when making games so your game can be more inclusive, inviting to all players, and create better gaming experiences. As we said at the beginning, gaming is for everyone and we should be constantly taking steps towards making it so. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin  boardgamegeek.com Good Day Internet! Now that we’ve gone through the importance of both mechanics and theme it’s time to discuss which one you’ll want to focus on when beginning to develop your game. Before we do though, I want to be clear that in order to make a great game you need to have a great theme and great mechanics that work well together. For that to happen you’re going to need to be developing both mechanics and theme simultaneously as soon as possible. When you’re at that initial idea phase and early development, theme and mechanics will probably be developed separately (and therefore the existence of this blog post). However, shortly thereafter you need to be constantly looking at them together (for example, does this mechanic match the theme? Does the theme make sense for what mechanics I’ve implemented?) throughout development. Furthermore, you shouldn’t rely on the fact that there are a small number of games where a fantastic/popular theme, without much consideration of mechanics, was highly successful (Cards Against Humanity, Exploding Kittens) or vice-versa (Dominion): it’s almost guaranteed that your game isn’t going to be one of those lucky ones. Unless you’re making an abstract game (in which case, you don’t have to focus so much on theme), you need to be putting in substantial effort into both mechanics and theme. So, without further ado, in the early stages of game development you should focus on developing your theme first. The reason for this is that theme gives your game direction, whereas mechanics are just how the game is played. Like we said in “Game Basics: Theme” your theme is your ‘why’ and it ties together the actions, game terminology, components, and what you do in game. You’re going to want to know what that is before you start developing your mechanics further (assuming you have any). Remember how we also said that most of your theme comes through the actual gameplay? So, if you start developing a bunch of mechanics and have no theme, that could cause some problems. Namely, how can your mechanics bring out the theme if there is none or it’s not clear what it is exactly? Additionally, in the absence of theme, mechanics are just a ‘beginning’, a set of actions, and an ‘end goal’ (ie. points scored, player elimination, etc). Those mechanics should be tying together (beyond being the way to play a game from start to finish) and they probably don’t because there’s no theme to direct them. That's why you need to have that theme (at least the backstory part) first, and then make your game. It’s where your players start in game, it's the start of an explanation of a game, and it should be where you start to develop your game.  http://i.imgur.com/t9qYw.png Let’s say, perhaps, you go the other way and develop mechanics before theme. What happens then? Well, developing mechanics before theme in game design is like creating a machine without a purpose. In the end you’ll have a machine that has all the parts it needs to work, but it won’t have any use. There’s also a possibility of a lack of a logical order of operations. In most cases, you could find a use or problem for the machine to solve, but most likely it won’t be very efficient at solving that problem. There’s a high probability that in order for it to be useful you’ll need to rearrange and swap out a lot of the parts.
The same thing happens when you don’t develop your theme or ‘why’ (aka problem) before creating a game. You’ll have something that works, but it won’t be useful nor efficient. You’re going to want to develop your theme first so you don’t end up with a ‘machine’ that you’ll have to paste a theme onto (aka create a problem for it to solve). It’s not going to work out well for you. Lastly, I’d like to point out that this blog post isn’t about inspiration for game ideas, but rather it is more about the initial stages of game development. Your game idea can come from a cool theme, interesting mechanics, component restrictions, or whatever else; it doesn’t really matter in the long run. Besides, who am I to tell you where your inspiration should come from? The part that really matters is what happens after that. That’s the part where you spend your time trying to transform this idea into a physical game that someone can play. There’s a lot of work required to make that happen and, in the long run, making your theme your initial focus will make the design process focused and easier for everyone. That’s it for this week. Next week, we’ll take a closer look at the core of your game. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin  http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic761434_md.jpg Good Day Internet!
As promised, today we’ll take a look at the importance of mechanics in board game design. To start off, I’m going to give a more technical definition of mechanics for those who are that way inclined. The technical definition of a game mechanic is a set of actions that form a rule. It should be clear that game mechanics should also progress gameplay in some way. For example, the rule 'roll a die' entails the actions of picking up a die, shaking it up in your hand. and tossing it on the table. The 'roll a die' rule sums up of all those actions into a single game mechanic and the result will equate to a further action/forwardness in gameplay. 'Taking turns' is also technically a game mechanic. It’s the action of ending your turn and letting someone else go as defined by a rule (progressing gameplay by allowing it to continue). If you think about it, there are many different ways to 'take turns'. Play could pass to the left, the winner of the last round could go next, players could take simultaneous turns, or play could pass to the next player by some other rule. As you can see, there is a lot of variety in even the most simple game mechanics. If you want to dive further into simple game mechanics I highly recommend Rym DeCoster's "Mastering Game Mechanics" on Youtube (I may have slightly adapted their definition of mechanics for the purpose of this blog post). Personally though, I think that's enough of that, so let's move on to the more general definition and discussion. Put simply, game mechanics are your 'how'. It’s what you are allowed/required to do and when. It is also the restrictions you will put on the players as they try to achieve their goal. Those restrictions are defining what players may do and the paths they may take. In other words, it tells players what options are available to them and it's up to them to determine how to use those mechanics to achieve victory. Based on that, It should be pretty clear to see that your mechanics are going to determine whether or not your game is playable (can you play from start to finish in a reasonable amount of time?). It's also going to determine if you've made a game, or a set script because your mechanics are too restrictive or lead to one clear best path (making all other paths not worth exploring). When starting to design your game, start with only the main mechanics, or core mechanics, required to play the game. For instance, if you were designing King of Tokyo, your core mechanic would be the press your luck dice mechanism. If you think about it, that only allows you to do 4 things: gain victory points, gain energy, gain health, or attack. In the very beginning of designing, you'd probably only have attacking and gaining victory points because that's all you need to ensure the game can be played from start to finish in a reasonable amount of time (aka playable). If we apply the same principles to your first design, you're going to have to cut down on some of the more "creative" mechanics you want to include in your game. Chances are those mechanics are too complicated, too much of a hassle, or won't work anyway (sorry amigos). This will ensure that your game is playable and will allow you to be able to work out a lot of the kinks that would be too hidden if you had everything else you wanted to include in your game. It will also give your game direction, which is very important, and allows you to build out from a solid, working base. The last thing I want to talk about in some detail is the intricacies of simple mechanics, since their importance doesn't get as much attention as they should. They are called simple, so it's easy to assume you know how they work (I thought the same). The way I'm going to go about this is by going through an example of a basic game mechanic decision for a simple card game and then show how that would effect gameplay. The game mechanic decision we'll look at is 'play one draw one' versus 'draw one play one'. In 'play one draw one', players already know what they want to do when it comes to their turn. They also have ample time after drawing a card at the end of their turn to determine what to do next. In 'draw one play one', that new card drawn at the start of the turn may change what they want to do and slow down gameplay. This causes actual and perceived play time to really suffer and may have a huge effect on players' enjoyment of your game. However, 'draw one play one' usually works nicely in take that games because it gives a player who has been attacked the ability to do something, anything on their turn (and perhaps even retaliate). This example is pretty simple, but it's also something that casual playtesters (which is the majority of playtesters you'll originally play your game with) are probably not going to be able to identify and point out to you. So take it easy and take the time to figure out how to get simple mechanics to work, as well as work together, in a game before going crazy with everything else. It will help you to recognize what will work and what won't without having to play it a bunch times. This will save you time, headaches and make you a better designer. That's it for this time. Next post, we’ll take a look at theme and mechanics together and which one you need to focus on most when you start to design your game. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin |
Kevin CarmichaelBoard game designer and developer discussing the ins and outs of game design. 
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