Board game mechanics seems to remove immersion and fun from a game

Mullet's got it. The complicated games that aren't easily made "second nature" are often perceived as no fun.

However, as a creator of games, we have to bear in mind that we've often racked our minds to forsee every possible outcome. Playing chess against yourself isn't usually considered to be a fun pastime, but you do it to improve your own game. Similarly, when designing a board game, doing some solo tests can help you be a better designer, but the game isn't a game until you get other minds going against yours, bounded in their ability to do so by the width of the rules.

I have had some great solo game experiences. Maybe if you tried some more theme-heavy games work better, like Ambush!? Games I mostly play and design are wargames where immersion is everything despite (or because of?) thick rulebooks and solo play is very popular.

Big part of it is probably to make sure all rules are clearly tied to something obvious in the theme. Mechanics first is unlikely to be a good idea.

IMO the trick to immersion in rpgs is to have the GM be the only one that know the rules and makes all die rolls (in secret of course). I know I am in a tiny minority.:)

And regarding Lovecraft I started reading his stories recently. Good stuff (but to be honest liked the Howards stories I read before these better; Conan!). Look up Cthulhuchick's free (legal) ebook with all HPL storiesall and her blog with recommended reading list. I work my way down that list with ebook in phone.

I had a similar "aha" moment a few days ago while playing a card game titled "Kittens in a Blender." The game itself is not deep - the mechanics involve placing cards decorated with adorable handdrawn cartoon kittens into one of three locations: a box, the counter, or a blender - and then seeing if you can blend your opponents kittens while saving your own. The game is really, really dumb - and yet we were all laughing histerically as we played (and I am a cat lover!).

It occured to me that if the game didn't feature the kittens - say, instead they were just wooden cubes - with a rule that said objects on "space 3" were to be removed when the right card was played, the game wouldn't be nearly as much fun. The whole experience of the game is driven by the dark (and slighly uncomforable) humor of blending kittens.

While not a video-game with twitch mechanics, the game moved quite fast. No one deliberated about what they should do - they put their kittens in the box, their opponents in the blender, tried to move their kittens out of the blender, and tried to blend when the timing was good (or sometimes just to be an @$$!). It was a game that exhibited an experience over its rather simple mechanics, and it worked well because of it.

The time to develop a video game would be at least 10x to 100x more than developing a board game with the same rules (from scratch). This seems to be a point many people forget...

One sentence of rules for a board game might be thousands of lines of code...

That is because you start balancing by yourself. And your number of players slowly increase while you keep balancing. The balance in a board game is much more important that a video game. While a video game can have some imbalances that can be overcome with that "twitch". Moreover, video games have a faster growing group of play testers. And you get much more and faster feedback. Since they can test it in their homes by simply installing and playing.

While board games have simple rules. The rules need to be sharp from the beginning to get play testers.
Video games have simple rules written in complex programming. Yet the sharpness will come much more automatically. Since play testers often play more numerous times.

But when watching what the title of this topic says. I actually had a lot of fun thinking of mechanics and discarding the bad ones. Designing the game is a game on itself. :)
That is also the only reason why I kept going in the beginning.

Of course I understand that knowing your game from inside to out removes the fun of the game itself. I call that, being the "skilled expert" on the game. You don't have to explore and experience your game any more. But I guess it is only after such a long time?

The only way to keep it fun is to make a game complex enough that you don't know all the answers. But then you are not sure if your game has good balance for the players.

I'm intrigued by the articulated points regarding board and video games. One of the issues I'm finding as I'm in the throes of moving a game forward as the Developer of a war game is the level of minutia which the designer wants to retain.

In a video game, despite the countless lines of code, it's hidden from view as pointed out earlier allowing one to enjoy the game. In a not-so-recent podcast by Tom Vasel, he pointed out that those engaged in the design aspect of board game should remember we're designing a fun activity. For the game currently under development, I'm finding that the level of fidelity provided on say the movement of an airship is only paralleled to the level of tedium experienced by potential players.