Last week I posted about a number of articles by other designers. One of them was a very interesting article by Keith Burgun which really made me think: Arcs in strategy games

In it he described how games are built up in arcs, of different sizes. The longest arc is the entire game, while the shortest arc is any single action you take. There are in-between arcs, where you are taking multiple steps towards an intermediate goal.

Keith’s article was mostly geared to computer games (though certainly relevant to board games as well). I’d like to take his ideas and see what they mean specifically for board games.

Arcs all over the place: An example

To understand what is meant by “arcs” in board games, let’s look at an example: Agricola.

In Agricola the short arc is clearly defined: Place one of your workers on a space on the board. Every turn this is what you’ll be doing and as such it forms a nice and simple basis for our analysis. It also makes Agricola very simple in this sense, as there is only ever one decision you need to make: Where does my worker go?

The long arc is also clear: Play (and win!) the game.

These elements are easy enough to describe and wouldn’t be too much different for other games (though: In Catan it’s much harder to describe a single short arc. Is it rolling dice to gain resources? Is it spending your resources to build things? Is it trading resources? All of these are elemental to the game…)

It’s the intermediate arcs that I believe make Agricola such a great game.

There are three important intermediate arcs, the last of which can be split up further.

The first is “gather food for your family”. This is something that will happen throughout the game and it’s an important driver of what Agricola is all about. You can see it coming, you can plan for it. And you have to work on it, because not doing so basically means you lost the game. This (like all intermediate and long arcs) consists of smaller sub-arcs: Gathering resources to build an oven to bake bread. For which you’ll use your smallest arc, the placing of family members.

The second arc is “increasing your family”. More family means more actions you can take and more actions means you can do more towards getting to victory. This arc also consists of a number of sub-arcs: Gather resources, build an extension to your house, take the “additional family member” action.

The final arc is “working towards victory points”, which can manifest in different ways. It can be in gathering wood so you can collect animals and keep them, or it can be in building small and large investments which are worth points.

These three arcs are interwoven: Increasing your family means you can take more actions to go for victory points, but also that you need more food. And more family members can also help get the food they themselves need. And having animals will give you victory points, but you’ll probably need to slaughter a few as well to feed your family…

Finally, the arcs in Agricola change during the game. The endpoint stays the same, but how you go about this evolves: In the beginning of the game you’re scrambling for food, while at the end you (hopefully) have an efficient engine that churns out what you need. Getting more family members early on means building your house, while later this is no longer required. And in the first few turns you don’t care about victory points, while in the end it’s the only thing you’re really going for. Perhaps this then could be seen as a meta-arc, where the game changes how the intermediate arcs are done exactly.

A second look at what an arc is

Keith defines an arc as: ”A grouping of game state information over time and how it changes”.

While I don’t disagree with this definition, I think it’s a bit too broad for use in board games. Game state is something we have in board games (what does the board look like, what cards do players have in their hands, etc.) and it’s important. But for a computer game the game state can for a large part be determined by the game itself; there is a lot of stuff happening in the background that players only ever see the outcomes of. For board games however “the game” hardly does anything, it’s only the players that are the drivers of changes in game state.

The example above hopefully gave some idea about what an arc entail in board games. There I presented arcs as sequences of actions that a player takes, where those actions lead to something that is important in the context of the game. This could be “take actions so I have enough food to feed my family”, or “gather wood and use it to build fences and then gather animals so I get victory points”.

Using this I believe we can try to give a definition that is particularly useful for board games:

An arc is any set of actions that aims to achieve a (sub) goal of the game.

The important parts here are “actions” and “goal”.

The actions part implies that the player is actively doing something. They might not have full control, but they are doing what is possible.

The goal part means that there is something specific they are working towards.

Let’s take a closer look at both, starting with the latter.

Sub-goals in board games

The over-arching goal of most board games is clear: To win!

But to achieve the final victory there are generally a number of sub-goals that need to be achieved. We’ve seen the examples for Agricola. In Catan sub-goals are each of the roads, villages and buildings that you want to build. And getting the longest trade route or most knights can be a sub-goal as well.

Sub-goals can have sub-sub goals. To get the longest trade route your sub-goal is to build one more road. And your sub-sub goal then is to get the wood you need. And your sub-sub-sub goal is to convince Mary to trade it to you for some sheep.

Sub-goals and interesting choices

The essential feeling I always get from playing Agricola is “I want to do everything!”

I never really thought about this much, but I think I now understand why (and how): In Agricola you are trying to achieve a multitude of sub-goals and they are mutually exclusive to work towards at the same time. I can gather wood and work towards building a house to work towards getting more family members or I can use that wood to build fences and get more lifestock. But I cannot do both!.

Compare this to Catan, where there is far less of such a dilemma. There is generally a clear order to the game: Get resources to build roads. As soon as you have a spot where you can build a village, build that village. Then go for more roads and more villages, until the island starts to get crowded. Then move towards cities and eventually development cards. Sure, at some points you might wonder whether it’s better to invest in another village or a city, but these moments are relatively rare.

I think this is a really interesting insight: Interesting decisions arise when players want to work towards mutually exclusive sub-goals.

You can add to this: These sub-goals should be about equally important (i.e. powerful). And these sub-goals should have a different impact on the game. Again going back to Catan: Building a village or a city only has a marginally different impact on the game, while in Agricola spending your wood on a house or fences will have markedly different results.

Taking action

The other (first) part of arcs (remember, that was what we were talking about) is that players take affirmative action. They have to do something. This can be a single action or a whole string of actions.

In Monopoly I can have the goal to obtain all of the green properties. But if I don’t land on them when they are for sale, or if other players don’t want to trade them, then I’m not going to achieve my goal.

Working towards a goal is rewarding. It shows progress and it makes players feel in control.

Having a goal and not having the tools to achieve it feels frustrating. Players can complain about “randomness”. But it’s not randomness itself that is the problem, it’s the lack of control, of being able to give direction that is bad.

Beginnings and endings

Arcs sub-divide a game. At some point you decide to start working towards a sub-goal. You take the actions required and (hopefully) you then achieve your goal.

This has a number of interesting results.

First, it breaks up a game in parts, which are easier to oversee than the game as a whole: I’ll aim towards building this building and I’ll worry about what comes nextafterwards. This can make it easier to know what to do in a game and to focus direction. It can also make it easier to learn and teach a game, as you can break up the explanation into logical parts of what you’ll be trying to achieve at different points in the game.

Second, achieving a sub-goal is fun! It gives a sense of progress and completion. You’ve done something, it went well and now you’re one step closer to your ultimate goal (of world domination winning the game). And in the end games should be about fun. So giving players more “achievements” is definitely worthwhile.

Interacting arcs

I already briefly mentioned that the arcs in Agricola interact. This can be in the (very important) way of having sub-goals compete, but there is more to it than just that.

When arcs interact it means that achieving one of your sub-goals changes how you look at the other sub-goals that you might go for. Perhaps something that was previously super important now becomes trivially easy. Or something that was impossible before becomes a real option.

In this way a game can evolve from round to round, forming a longer arc than the “immediate” sub-goals that players set themselves.

Closing thoughts

Writing this article was an eye-opener for me. I’d never really thought about arcs or sub-goals for board games that much. For further design that certainly is going to change. Especially the insight that interesting decisions come from wanting to achieve multiple sub-goals at the same time seems particularly useful. I’ll be sure to design multiple sub-goals into future games!

I think this also helps to think about board game design at different levels. I’ve always looked at the over-arching goal (winning the game) and the basic steps, of “what are you actually doing in a turn”. Having an intermediate level to focus on will be very useful I believe. I foresee creating intermediate arcs as “building blocks” for the bigger game. These can be crafted individually before being plugged into the whole. Of course it’s the interactions that really make things interesting, but at least being able to do some of the work at a somewhat “smaller” level should already help.

Further reading

I mentioned interesting decisions in board games. You can read here what I wrote about the subject before.

This subject also has connections to the “pacing” of a game: What happens when.

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.

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