![]() As late as 2007, Phil Walker-Harding wrote a post on BGG about the whole “which comes first, theme or mechanic” question, and this post on the Boardgame Designers Forum articulated the difference (not commonly-understood at the time) between a game’s theme and its narrative.Įven in Erin Dean’s 2018 interview compilation For the Love of Boardgames, designers were asked which “philosophy” they followed. ![]() Yet there was by no means 100% agreement about whether this was the best of all worlds. It’s an unskippable part of the process, finding one’s “voice”.Ĭlassic Euro designers, as I discussed above, made theme subservient to mechanic–and again, since their audience drew from a similar population, fun-wise, there were few complaints. ![]() The huge majority begin their careers by copying what’s already out there. Only a few ( Francis Tresham comes to mind) are able to achieve it repeatedly they are the true geniuses of our hobby. Obviously, designers are lucky if they have such a moment once in their careers. Vaccharino designed Dominion, both are very open about how they started with tried-and-true formats but then, after hundreds of hours of testing, had an life-changing moment of inspiration which “broke the mold” and spawned an entirely new kind of game. ![]() When you read about how Richard Garfield came up with Magic: the Gathering or how Donald X. Today I want to pick up the thread of the argument to talk about why it’s also bad for designers. So, yesterday I went on a rant about how it’s a Bad Thing for players to lean too heavily into game mechanic jargon. ![]()
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