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Purpose of a Board

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Gamebot
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I decided to come up with a list of things the ubiquitous "board" can actually do in a game. Please add a category if you think I'm missing any. I've come up with this list to help me decide when a card game needs to become a board game and vice versa.

Defines Relative Position

This is probably the most common use of a board. An example would be Risk in which the board shows that some countries are next to other countries.

Stores a State

This is the most glaringly obvious use of the board. In Monopoly, the hotel token proves that your property has a hotel on it. In Risk, a soldier token on a space means that you have a soldier on that space.

Contains Rules

In Settlers of Catan, the forest means that you produce wood. In Chutes and Ladders, when you land on a ladder, you move ahead.

Provides Easy Set-up

This is completely unnecessary, but it appears in some games. Sorry! has predefined spaces for placing your cards: One for the draw pile and one for the discard pile.

Provides Easy Scoring

Ticket to Ride and Carcasonne both eliminate the need for paper and pencil for scoring and use a token for each player to slide along the board and keep track of their score.

Displays Rules

Ticket to Ride has a reference chart printed on the board.

Infernal
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Purpose of a Board

Quote:
Defines Relative Position

This is probably the most common use of a board. An example would be Risk in which the board shows that some countries are next to other countries.

I would not say relative position but it is more an absolute position.

Cards can show relative position quite easily. In Magic when you attack you tap the monster card. The defending player then pushes the monster cards that the are using for defence forwards. this shows the relative position of the defending cards to the non defending cards. The taped attacking cards shows the relative postion of the attacking cards to the non-attacking cards.

Where as a board can show the absoulte position of a piece (like in chess) by using a grid.

jpfed
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Purpose of a Board

The board is just a communal extension of every player's brain- a tool for memory and computation. It's hard to imagine the board being anything more or less than that.

But yeah, all of the specific things you mentioned would fit under that.

---

Rereading your post, now I understand what your intent was.

The pragmatics of the situation will determine whether cards (like MTG), boards (like Risk), or tiles (like Roborally) are best. Cards are more general devices for storing and recombining information than tiles, and tiles are more general than boards.

The positions marked on boards are more stable than tiles, and tiles are more stable than cards. A grid of cards laid out on a table is vulnerable to being disturbed in a way that is less true of tiles and not true at all of boards. Pieces can be slid across the continuous surface of a board. A set of tiles has some discontinuities that make this doable but less pleasant. Pieces placed on cards cannot be slid, and the act of disturbing the position of a piece on a card (in any way) threatens to disturb the position of the card.

Gamebot
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Purpose of a Board

Infernal wrote:

I would not say relative position but it is more an absolute position.

I meant that the position of the "Go" on the Monopoly board is that it is next to Boardwalk on the right and Mediterranean Ave on the left. It doesn't matter that its absolute position is in the corner. The board could be cricular and it would still play the same.

I guess I had absolute positon in the "holds a state" category.

In the end, I just meant position on the board.

Infernal wrote:

Cards can show relative position quite easily. In Magic when you attack you tap the monster card. The defending player then pushes the monster cards that the are using for defence forwards. this shows the relative position of the defending cards to the non defending cards. The taped attacking cards shows the relative postion of the attacking cards to the non-attacking cards.

Where as a board can show the absoulte position of a piece (like in chess) by using a grid.

You're right that cards can show relative position to other cards. A lot of my points about board games can be said about card games as well.

Gamebot
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Purpose of a Board

jpfed wrote:
The board is just a communal extension of every player's brain- a tool for memory and computation. It's hard to imagine the board being anything more or less than that.

Good point. A little deeper than where I was tinking, but interesting nonetheless.

jpfed wrote:

The positions marked on boards are more stable than tiles, and tiles are more stable than cards.

The physical aspect plays a huge part in it in more ways than one. I see a lot of games out there that have "boards" just to make you feel like you got your money's worth. A lot of trivia games are notorious for that. Trivial Pursuit could just use dice to determine the category, but instead it opts for the visually pleasing board. Would you pay $30 bucks for a deck of trivia cards? The game of Zobmondo in stores now has a board, while the older version was just a deck of cards.

Ultimately, I want my games to have no fluff. I considered removing the board from my current game and tinkered around with tiles or cards, but found out that the board was the only way to go. I just want to define why it is that some games are better suited for boards than others.

Thanks for your response!

Infernal
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Purpose of a Board

Quote:
I meant that the position of the "Go" on the Monopoly board is that it is next to Boardwalk on the right and Mediterranean Ave on the left. It doesn't matter that its absolute position is in the corner. The board could be cricular and it would still play the same.

Ahh, OK. I see it now (I think it was just my brain being dense :D).

Boards tend to be static (that is they don't change between games). One can devise methods that do allow this, but they more resemble combinging tiles on boards (settlers of catan travel version - it is a plastic board with indentations for the tiles).

Tiles allow the design of the play field to be changed with each playing of the game (or even during the game), like with carcassonne.

If cards are used to make a play field they can be thought of just as thin, rectangular tiles.

------------------------------------------

What about games like table top battless, like Warhammer? Would you count the table top as a game board or as something different?

Anonymous
Purpose of a Board

The board also allows the ability to predict moves with counterattacks such as in chess. It is easier to plan a visual counter because the board allows your mind to draw a mental pattern or picture.

Challengers
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Purpose of a Board

Gamebot wrote:

The physical aspect plays a huge part in it in more ways than one. I see a lot of games out there that have "boards" just to make you feel like you got your money's worth. A lot of trivia games are notorious for that. Trivial Pursuit could just use dice to determine the category, but instead it opts for the visually pleasing board. Would you pay $30 bucks for a deck of trivia cards? The game of Zobmondo in stores now has a board, while the older version was just a deck of cards.

Ultimately, I want my games to have no fluff. I considered removing the board from my current game and tinkered around with tiles or cards, but found out that the board was the only way to go. I just want to define why it is that some games are better suited for boards than others.

Thanks for your response!

I agree that some boards are not necessary in order to enjoy the game. However, you could extend your conclusion (paying $30 for a deck of cards) to simply state, "Would you spend $20 for a book of Trivia?"
The point of Trivial Pursuit is to package the enjoyment of trivia with the social interaction of gameplay. I think the TP board and components achieve that goal very well.
Having said that, in our family, after we've played a game like TP several times, we've identified the most enjoyable aspect of the game for us, which is throwing the questions out there and shouting out answers. As this does not require the board, we don't use it.
I recommend that you design your games with the board and let the gamers decide how central it is to the game.

Here is a flip-side to the centrality of the board: how many of you have created games using the RISK board? Whether the theme was along the lines of the original RISK, or something completely different (I designed a gem mining game for the kids), you can see that the universal nature of the board lends itself to such constructions.

Mitch

Anonymous
Trivial Pursuit's Board IS a glorified scoreboard

The comments to this post have been very well thought out and expressed. Congrats to all for such an excellent topic.

I believe that the original post nails the issue. TP, and later copies, wanted to turn asking trivia questions into a game -- but could not justify asking $40+ for a bunch of trivia cards. The boardgame, and most that followed it, were simply churned out with out much thought . . . TP, in my way of thinking, is simply a glorified scoreboard, used to keep track of the number of wedges each player maintains . . . the rest of the board is completely wasted.

And it is unfortunate in that they are trying to get people to use their brains, but then utterly fail to stimulate any grey matter for at least fifty percent of the game -- more if you land on an abnoxious amount of "roll agains".

I don't recall if you can see a good picture of it on their website, but for an excellent example of a trivia game where the designers actually used their heads (and produced a great product) check out "Brain Chain" at www.BrainChainGames.com.

I am not even sure how to categorize the uses Brain Chain makes of its board -- the single playing pawn travels around an interior track. So the board is used for, at minimum, strategic movements, keeping track of relative positions, choosing trivia category and jockeying for position. There is probably more -- but that is what I can recall.

One more general comment on the functions of a board -- I think that well-designed boards "organize information" in a way that the players appreciate.

Scurra
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Re: Trivial Pursuit's Board IS a glorified scoreboard

Board_Game_Attorney wrote:
I don't recall if you can see a good picture of it on their website, but for an excellent example of a trivia game where the designers actually used their heads (and produced a great product) check out "Brain Chain" at www.BrainChainGames.com.

Now this is interesting, in that what they've done is to take the next logical step beyond the Trivial Pursuit "non-board" by crossing the game with Go-Moku (or any similar five-in-a-row game.) I'm not entirely convinced that this in itself adds anything revelatory to the genre (hell, you could replace the Go-Moku board with a Snakes-and-Ladders board and you'd have something of the same effect!) but some of the creative extensions that have arisen from the combination (especially using the pawn as an extension of the potential win line) are clearly notable.

To return to an early observation for a moment though: when does a tile become a board? I wouldn't have called what are used in Robo-Rally tiles, even though you can choose to use multiples of them to create a larger playing area.

Anonymous
Purpose of a Board

Here's one. The board can service as a trademark for the game. Some game boards are famous for their designs than their game play.

Gamebot
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Purpose of a Board

Dragonchill wrote:
Here's one. The board can service as a trademark for the game. Some game boards are famous for their designs than their game play.

That a good point, but I think that may be an after effect. I don't know if anyone designs with that in mind, although, they might. With that said though, the board from Operation is very iconic.

Speaking of that, here's another one:

Provides Mechanical Function

You can't play Operation without the buzzer effect of the board. ...or pretty much any of those children games like Hungry Hungry Hippos, or Perfection.

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