Type, Mechanisms, Theme... What order?

Just a hunch, but I suspect you'll find most of the folks here are "theme first", but I bet that most of the "pros" (Knizia, Kramer) are more likely to be "mechanics first." Not sure if there's anything to that...

I could be wrong about that, but for myself, I definitely have a process that commonly works like "I think it would be interesting to have a game about [subject]", and then I try to think of the kinds of decisions someone involved in that situation would likely face; what kinds of problems would they have to overcome? I then try to cook up some mechanics that evoke those kinds of decisions.

There are definitely a couple of exceptions, where I first came up with a new mechanic and then found a theme to fit into it, but in general, I find that new themes, or trying to come up with a new angle on an established theme, are the most fertile ground for cool mechanics. But at all times, I conciously have in mind the kind of dilemma I'm trying to set before the players...

All that said, I think either approach is just fine, but the bottom line is usually going to be the interesting set of decisions the players face. If they're interesting enough, players will forgive thematic disconsonance. On the flip side, mechanics that do a great job evoking the theme may be well-received even if they don't make an earth-shatteringly great game in and of themselves. A good example is "The Bottle Imp", which sounds like an absolutely beautiful evocation of its theme even if it's "just another" trick taking game. (Haven't played, but hoping to...)

-Jeff

I would have to say that I am 75% theme and 25% mechanic.

I think most people come at games from a creative thinking direction, having a theme drive the type of game. If you think about it, how many games are created each year based on a movie or book..... Someone goes, hey I think King Arthur might contain couple ideas for a new card game, poof a new game will appear in less then a month in hopes to ride the movie hype!

Once in awhile I think about a mechanic or game component that could drive the game, recently in another thread I was asking about a shaking or rocking mechanism to use for a game. Not sure what game or theme the game might have, but I think adding in a game component like this adds fun, think about a miniature game like warhammer, if you could build in an "earthquake" concept. Could be cool to be moving around a board and random earthquakes could happen, doing damage to those in the area of effect.....

Nice discussion thread! Always interesting to see how different people think.

From my limited experience, I go something like ...

BROAD MECHANIC WITH SOME RELATED CONCEPTS I WANT TO CAPTURE > BROAD THEME > MORE SPECIFIC MECHANIC > REVISE THEME ... and so on ...

For example, I had a broad mechanic:

"easy-flowing card game with different victory conditions for different people and incorporated a concept of people paying more for something that was closer to their needs."

Then a broad theme:

"selling houses ... players are real estate agents"

Then more specific mechanics:

" ... and each get (say) 3 buyer cards detailing characteristics of the house. Then each turn a player plays a card which either ... changes buyer cards or 'builds a house' by adding rooms or characteristics (or demolish rooms, etc.). When you satisfy all 3 buyer characteristics, you can sell the house, BUT you subtract the cost of unnecessray rooms/characteristics from your profits"

Then revised theme:

"but lets say that instead of houses, we use companies, with different functions selected by buyers (e.g. medical stuff ... includes cloning, cryogenics, vitamin supplments and anti-ageing creams; Web stuff includes internet search engines, on-line retailing and internet banking).

Then back to updated mechanics ...

"could also have scoring modifier cards ... e.g. +$10m (and exclude relevant profit losses) for 'hyper-modern' technologies [3 or more types within a function]."

And that lead to my idea for the "Designer Dotcom" cardgame. (Mind you, that one hasn't even been prototype and playtested yet, just an early draft card list!)

RA is an interesting case, since there is an article about its development that was published in Counter that recounts how he started with a much richer game that encompassed a lot more aspects of Egypt but that it was too huge a game to be reasonable. So it got cut back and back until the final result was a game which people criticise for having nothing much to do with the theme! (I suspect that some aspects of the game also crossed over into what later became Amun-Re.)

So there's an example of a game that started with a strong theme but ended up being a game without much of a theme at all!