Board Game Designers Forum

Thoughts about some game-related topics that are not long enough for separate blog posts.

What are the fundamental functional differences between boardgames and card games? I’m not sure how important this question is from a game player’s point of view but it’s certainly important for game designers (even for video game designers). The obvious physical format is important, but now that we can convert physical non-electronic games to electronic formats the lines are less clear. More importantly, each type of game emphasizes or encourages different kinds of challenges and gameplay, regardless of the physical format.

One of the disadvantages of writing articles for magazines, such as “Against the Odds,” is that it can be literally years from the time it is submitted to the time it is published. I recently sent ATO an article about different kinds of war related games, and I’m going to briefly categorize its 4,000 words in 400.

I will not respond to any comments here, sooner or later the full article will be published.

Joe Angiolillo’s taxonomy of war related games:
● Games about war
● Wargames
● Simulations

Games about war
● no connection with reality
● symmetric

When someone says a game is "elegant", what do they mean? I'm not sure, so I've done a bit of investigating.

Is it used much? In my Info Select database, which includes my own notes about game design and teaching, and material that I've scraped off the Internet about those same topics in the past seven years, there are 84 notes containing the word "elegant" and another 34 containing "elegance". Clearly the term is used a lot in conversations and writin

According to a recent tweetdeck, one of the trending:worldwide topics on twitter was 6 word stories. In the past few months I've asked people to say 6 words about game design, programming, wargames, and casual games.

This time the charge is this: say six words about stories in games (or stories and games, if you prefer).

Recently I was discussing via blog posts what depth is in games (http://gamasutra.com/blogs/LewisPulsipher/20111219/9125/What_is_Depth_in... and elsewhere), and then ran across a discussion of how role-playing games have changed since D&D was first published
(http://shirosrpg.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-weep-for-newbs.html#comment-form ). I’ve realized that there is a connection between the two, that what gamers are looking for in games has changed in a fundamental way in the past 30-40 years.

Recently a student in a video game design curriculum posted a note on the IGDA Game Design SIG about an assignment. The assignment was to describe mechanics for a game and he said his instructor had told him he’d written rules instead, with the result being a poor grade. I generally emphasize to students that the rules for a tabletop game detail the mechanics of the game, so the question became “what is the difference between rules and mechanics.” And as I discussed this privately with the student I saw that part of the possible confusion was the difference between description and specification, between the general and the specific.

I rarely listen to podcasts, I suppose because I think writing provides a more concentrated form of information. (I don’t read blogs much, either, preferring more formal articles.) It takes more effort to read something than to listen, but in a given amount of time I think reading something that has been carefully written about a topic is more effective than listening to a podcast, which by its nature can be diffuse rather than focused.

Recently I was asked to participate in a podcast, “Ludology,” with Ryan Sturm and Geoff Englestein, “a podcast about the why of gaming” (in their case, tabletop gaming). So I listened to some episodes before agreeing (it will be recorded in January). The podcast is quite focused, the hosts have a topic in mind, may have a guest, and they talk about that topic. There are no feedback segments or other distractions, just discussion of the topic and related topics.

A recent episode is about innovation and this set me to thinking about a topic that I think Does Not Matter in game design. Most game players Don’t Care either, but clearly some people do.

I expect I'll be at PrezCon in late February in Charlottesville, VA. I'm scheduled to talk about game design at 9PM Friday evening. This will be an hour of (mostly) me talking, then an hour or more of questions, answers, and discussion.

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Another review of Dragon Rage, by Michael Barnes of fortressat. http://www.gameshark.com/features/871/Cracked-LCD-225-Dragon-Rage-Review...
Yes, it is expensive, though it will be carried once more by FunAgain and that eliminates the enormous shipping expense.
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December Miscellany

I've posted a long piece about teaching game design in my blog about teaching game design (http://teachgamedesign.blogspot.com/2011/12/teaching-game-design.html ) I decided it was not exactly suitable for this blog.