I get a lot of inspiration for board game design (and thus my writing here) from what other people publish. Below I’d like to share some articles that I found interesting in one way or another.

Learning about board game design from a video game designer learning from D&D…

Skye Larsen (twitter) takes a number of lessons for video game development from D&D. We can take the same lessons for board game development!

A video game dev learning from D&D

My over-arching take-away is that as a board game developer you should be like a good dungeon / game master: You set the stage for the players to create something fun and interesting.

Of course as a game master you will be present when people play and you can react directly to what players are doing. As a designer that’s not the case, so you’ll have to anticipate what they will do. And using that information give them an experience they’ll enjoy!

Don’t let players blow themselves up!

The perfect add-on for the previous post, Seth Jaffee (twitter) writes about anticipating the reckless (or should I say stupid) things that players can do and all but eliminate themselves from the game: You’re playing wrong!

I fully agree with his take that even if players do something that they should’ve known they shouldn’t do, they shouldn’t be out of the game. Which is not to say that they should be able to do something stupid and come out completely unharmed. It’s a fine line to walk between something having real and serious consequences (in-game of course) and those consequences meaning the end of the fun for that player.

I guess this is why so many (Euro) games don’t allow anything to be “lost” once it’s gained: Players can be less than efficient, but they can never blow themselves out of the sky…

Arcs in games (McDonalds would be proud!)

Keith Burgun (twitter) talks about “arcs” in strategy games, where an arc corresponds to a set of actions you do over a given time-frame (read the article for a much better explanation!). For board games the shortest arc would be a single move, while the longest is the entire game: Arcs in strategy games

What I really like is that this really clarifies the ideas of tactics and strategy: They are arcs over different time (turn!) periods.

What I also really like is the idea that each arc has a start and a finish. You start doing something (gathering resources to build that building you want) and you finish it (actually build the building). Of course this arc can happen at the same time as other arcs and it can be part of larger arcs (I want this building because it’ll allow me to capitalize on this other building I built before).

Let me help you with that…

Isaac Shalev (twitter). Shares some ideas about game that let you take actions that not only help yourself, but also the other players: What you do helps others too

This is something close to my heart, as it’s at the core of my own game of Los Buenos, where you’re actively trying to help others as it will give you karma (victory) points.

My belief is that player interaction is one of the easiest ways to improve tension, interesting decisions and depth: Other players will behave in more interesting ways than cardboard alone ever can. But most games are (logically) about “hurting” the other players (or at the very least getting in their way). It doesn’t need to be so, though!

The randomness within

“Are other players a source of randomness? – Sometimes!”

I love it when people pose questions they don’t have perfect answer for. In this case Greg (twitter) poses a very interesting question: Are players sources of randomness. And while his answer is given above (“sometimes”), it’s the way to get to it that gives the insight into board game design: I’m so random

This links to my remarks on the previous article: Player interaction can add a lot to board games, including (sometimes!) randomness.

My feeling is that this is in fact a more interesting form of randomness than say, a die. A die really is unpredictable, while another player isn’t quite. So you get into some very interesting mind-games of trying to out-smart your opponent.

This is so awesome it’s even got its own game genre: Social deduction!

But I think this is interesting enough that it could be used in (even) more games.

Closing thoughts

There are a lot of people writing interesting things out there on the internet. Above you find a few nuggets, but I hope you’ll be able to find even more for yourself.

It’s my firm belief that to get good at something you have to immerse yourself in it. That mostly means doing, but also learning. And not just learning from one source, but from as many as you can find.

So if you find other interesting material (or if you write other interesting material!) let me know?

Further reading

This isn’t the first time I was inspired by other people’s brilliance, find more here and here.

Further playing

For the last two years I’ve been working on “Los Buenos”, a game of rebuilding a destroyed village, in which you’re actively trying to help the other players. It plays 2-4 people and takes about 10-15 minutes per player.

If you’re interested (and want to help me out!), you can make your own print-and-play version to test. I’d much appreciate to hear your feedback!

Find everything you need here.

About the author

Hi, I’m Bastiaan. The goal of this blog is to learn about game design. That’s hopefully for you as the reader, but just as much for me as the writer.

Help me to learn? Leave a comment (below) or connect with me on Twitter? You can also subscribe to this blog below or like it on Facebook, to get updates when I write them.