What’s that? It is, against all odds and in flagrant violation of basic decency, a Monday again? How even dare it be so. Fuck this year. I know it’s traditional to reflect and eulogize and be positive about the year that’s ending but that ain’t me! This year was terrible and next year will likely be even worse WELCOME BACK TO MECHANIC MONDAY ON THE BLOG WHAT A GOOD TIME WE HAVE TOGETHER MY FRIENDS.
Today I want to talk about (checks notes) boardless board games. Now, I’ve always been kind of wiggly about boards in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a big beautiful map, I like a good illo and some smart graphic design and the feeling of unfolding the chunky flat setting for a battle of wits or what have you. But perhaps it’s because boards are so foundational (literally, and in every other way) to the genre that I’ve always been drawn to alternatives. One of my first (possibly my very first?) designs, Flect, was designed to be pieces in a drawstring bag with the grid embroidered on it. I design a lot of card games, including ones where you effectively have a board, but it’s made of cards. I’ve designed games where you place cards on other cards. There’s lots of reasons: for one thing, putting the board in boardgame sets certain expectations, like that it’s going to be a roll-and-move, or have some other traditional gameplay, to go with the traditional component; boards also dictate box size, and generally player count, due to our unconscious associated with the shape; boards also represent a static foundation, in that you may not have perfect information of a game, but you will have perfect information of its starting state. Park Place will never move away from Boardwalk.
Now, eschewing the board can mean many things, some of which have been already been explored. A board can be simplified to a grid, which can in turn be finite a la Chess, or infinite; it can be reduced to merely a surface, as in Hive or Oases. So let’s look at doing away with even that.
A Game In Your Hands
In Grids, players hold their left hands out and lace their fingers to form a grid. Players use the fingers and rings of their right hands to claim sections of the grid, freeing up fingers in the process. The object of the game is to completely extract both of your hands, leaving your opponent trapped in the grid.
So this is muuuuch looser than my usual mechanic pitches, but I still like the idea (it’s got potential) and think there’s a particular elegance to games where, puzzle-like, the choices we make to change board state are not additive or subtractive, but rather they affect a difference in configuration. There are card games that you play with the cards held in your hands, like oddball Aeronauts, but I went with fingers and rings as the only component because I liked the element of physical connection, and because there’s a long tradition of gesture/rhythm/jive hand games, and because barring injury or circumstances of birth, anyone can play without any additional pieces (and I’m sure prosthetics could eventually allow anyone to play). My game Oases was inspired by Daniel Solis’ 1000-Year Game Design Contest, just as his blog inspired this blog, and a key recurring feature in the better-rated entries in that contest were games that didn’t rely much on components. Grids, if fully designed, would be intended as just such a game; simple and beautiful and not too too complicated. Something that felt like a schoolyard variant of rochambeau, with a decision space slightly greater than tic-tac-toe.
It grows late. I’m tired, and I have work to do. So today’s somewhat wistful, extra-noodly post will end here. 2018 is dead, and we have killed it. 2019 may kill us, but it will never break us.
Today I want to talk about (checks notes) boardless board games. Now, I’ve always been kind of wiggly about boards in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a big beautiful map, I like a good illo and some smart graphic design and the feeling of unfolding the chunky flat setting for a battle of wits or what have you. But perhaps it’s because boards are so foundational (literally, and in every other way) to the genre that I’ve always been drawn to alternatives. One of my first (possibly my very first?) designs, Flect, was designed to be pieces in a drawstring bag with the grid embroidered on it. I design a lot of card games, including ones where you effectively have a board, but it’s made of cards. I’ve designed games where you place cards on other cards. There’s lots of reasons: for one thing, putting the board in boardgame sets certain expectations, like that it’s going to be a roll-and-move, or have some other traditional gameplay, to go with the traditional component; boards also dictate box size, and generally player count, due to our unconscious associated with the shape; boards also represent a static foundation, in that you may not have perfect information of a game, but you will have perfect information of its starting state. Park Place will never move away from Boardwalk.
Now, eschewing the board can mean many things, some of which have been already been explored. A board can be simplified to a grid, which can in turn be finite a la Chess, or infinite; it can be reduced to merely a surface, as in Hive or Oases. So let’s look at doing away with even that.
A Game In Your Hands
In Grids, players hold their left hands out and lace their fingers to form a grid. Players use the fingers and rings of their right hands to claim sections of the grid, freeing up fingers in the process. The object of the game is to completely extract both of your hands, leaving your opponent trapped in the grid.
So this is muuuuch looser than my usual mechanic pitches, but I still like the idea (it’s got potential) and think there’s a particular elegance to games where, puzzle-like, the choices we make to change board state are not additive or subtractive, but rather they affect a difference in configuration. There are card games that you play with the cards held in your hands, like oddball Aeronauts, but I went with fingers and rings as the only component because I liked the element of physical connection, and because there’s a long tradition of gesture/rhythm/jive hand games, and because barring injury or circumstances of birth, anyone can play without any additional pieces (and I’m sure prosthetics could eventually allow anyone to play). My game Oases was inspired by Daniel Solis’ 1000-Year Game Design Contest, just as his blog inspired this blog, and a key recurring feature in the better-rated entries in that contest were games that didn’t rely much on components. Grids, if fully designed, would be intended as just such a game; simple and beautiful and not too too complicated. Something that felt like a schoolyard variant of rochambeau, with a decision space slightly greater than tic-tac-toe.
It grows late. I’m tired, and I have work to do. So today’s somewhat wistful, extra-noodly post will end here. 2018 is dead, and we have killed it. 2019 may kill us, but it will never break us.
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