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Mycelia Board Game Review

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Game Design

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07 May 2018 13:01 #272806 by SuperflyPete
Replied by SuperflyPete on topic Game Design
When we designed STF, we wanted to have several layers of tension, but not so much that it was parylizing. We toyed with several methods of doing this, from a sand timer (a la Space Hulk) to limit turn length to other methods. We instead opted for a turn tracker, which limits the match length, plus we added a sand timer to add stress to a mini game, PLUS we added individual timers for bombs you need to defuse, which start at random times that begin upon their first discovery. This forces urgency onto the situation, paired with the overall time tracker, not to mention bad guys shooting at you.

It works well in our game, but the theme of the game is “urgency”, if you distill it. I had based the entire game upon that theme, wrapped it in a setting that supported the theme, and even in the “campaign meta” there is urgency in the way we handled the branching campaign - two losses and it’s all over.

So, I think to make a game that does what you want, you have to quantify the experience you want to create, create a theme that supports that experiential design goal, and then add elements that develop both the theme and setting in integral ways. Otherwise, you end up with half an idea that is halfway developed and that delivers half of the experience you were shooting for.
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07 May 2018 13:30 #272809 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Game Design
Disclaimer: I've designed a half dozen games, but only one got published, and the meager payday convinced me to keep my day job.

Even while working on my first game design back in 1979, I always started with setting. Once I know the topic of my game, that drives all of my other decisions: mechanics, components, player interaction, etc. Too many euro games bore me because the designer clearly started with mechanics and then lightly applied a theme at a later stage. Many of those games are interchangeable and frankly disposable because the theme is nearly irrelevant to the game, so the game lacks any sense of narrative or really anything to talk about once the game has ended.

I dislike perfect information, because it encourages analysis paralysis and discourages modeling any kind of dramatic setting. So I like to use cards and/or tiles that can at least temporarily keep information limited. I also dislike victory points, because they often support non-dramatic narratives and dry mechanics. And yet I am reasonably happy with measuring victory in terms of play money gained during the game, which probably goes back to my poker-playing days in college. I prefer decision followed by random resolution (like picking a target and then rolling to hit) over random followed by decision (like drawing a tile and then choosing which way to resolve it), because I prefer dramatic tension over dry analysis.
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07 May 2018 14:03 #272815 by xthexlo
Replied by xthexlo on topic Game Design
I wholly agree with both posts above, although I tend to think of “theme” as a gestalt of “setting” and “story” as opposed to something more fundamental. I also agree that theme, in the broad sense, is the heart and soul of a game and should drive every aspect of design. I completely disagree with the approach of making a collection of choices and mechanisms and then slapping a theme on at the end to create a game.

When I designed Bemused, for example, I wanted the entire game experience to engender a sense of anxiety and loss in support of its theme of artists degenerating into madness. That’s why players draw cards at the start of their turn and discard at the end. This was a deliberate, theme-driven design choice to heighten player anxiety and reinforce a sense of loss: the new possibilities suddenly presented at the start of your turn can feel unsettling when they call your prior plans into question or force you to re-evaluate your strategy; the discard at the end of your turn forces you to sacrifice future avenues that might later be worth pursuing (given the right card draws). Dûhr has a different theme and a completely different mechanism for drawing and losing cards.

For me, “theme” is the fundamental core of a game, served purposefully by mechanisms and structure, and both enriched and elevated by the imagination and engagement of the players.
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