Jesus these Mondays are relentless. Through absolutely no fault of my own, they continue to happen. I’ve already called my representatives and left well-articulated arguments against, and now, God help me, all I can do is wait.
And write this dreck up I suppose welcome back [no audience found] to another riveting installment of mEcHaNiC mOnDaY!
A quick thought on the intent behind this series: I’m writing this for many reasons, not least of which is to procrastinate from writing the play I’m supposed to be working on, but also in reaction to a lot of games writing that’s currently out there, which is very much Applied and not Theoretical. By that of course I mostly mean commercial. Amidst this board game boom, there’s an emphasis on getting to a finished product, as we’re currently in a mad scramble to capitalize on this bubble of popularity that I think most of us subconsciously know is due to burst any minute now. And I don’t begrudge this mindset: It’s not for me, but if you want to hustle that hustle, then by all means, get that paper, and I’d also reiterate that ideas are worthless without iteration, so whatever motivates you to test and refine those ideas, have the fuck at. At a recent playtest event though (Playtest Party by The Logan Theatre and The Nerdologues) I told people many times over as I demo’d Birch Crown, that I have less than zero ambition to go pro at this. It’s pure intellectual stimulation for me, and to shackle that to the grind for miniscule profits is one fool’s errand I’ll gladly skip.
All this is to say, I lean away HARD from trying to fall in line with conventional wisdom or marketability or accessibility (in the sense of like theme or difficulty level; physical accessibility is a worthy consideration that creates enjoyable design challenges), and I’m not trying to force a narrative of “and THIS is how you design,” or, “and this mechanic works best for x and is wrong to use for y”. A lot of what I mull over is not intended as an argument, or even tangibly useful, but not a lot of people are exploring these dead ends and blind alleys, so it’s fun for me to wander down them, poking and pushing. So hopefully, if you [repeat: no audience found] disagree with my approach in any or all of these articles, rest assured that it’s not meant as dogma, it really is just the mutterings of a harmless dabbler.
What a weird thing to write, and an even weirder thing to leave in, but it’s already 5 and I don’t care enough to go back and edit. On to the mechanic!
Today we’re going to talk abstract boardgames and we return to the well of Subverted Assumptions, with: Spaces and Intersections. A perfectly reasonable gaming assumption is that all pieces of a game occupy the same spaces; there are no spaces on the chessboard that are off-limits to any piece of either side. This creates the idea that the spaces are all equal; the difference in colour is a visual aid for movement types, but in actuality, the grid is a neutral one that can ultimately be occupied by any piece (ok I THINK bishops break this rule in Chess but you catch my drift) and all of the game’s pieces move through these functionally identical spaces. A subversion immediately presents itself: What if the spaces are not neutral? What if you have Rosette spaces or spaces of different colour, negative spaces that are holes in the board, spaces with different properties and different rules? For today’s mechanic, let’s take that one step further; what if some pieces stick to the spaces, but others play on the intersections between them?
I recently re-read The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson, and such is my enjoyment of the book that I made a re-theme of Birch Crown (The Fairer Crown), and also tooled around with bringing to life a game from the world of the book, “the game of rule”, wherein pawns control land and nobles draw strength from pawns. That immediately suggested to me that the pieces should be in different planes, like this
Spaces and Intersections
Your pawns are played onto intersections of the gameboard grid, and may only move along the lines of the grid; Your nobles are played onto the spaces of the grid, and may only move across lines into other spaces. A noble has strength equal to the number of pawn-occupied intersections at the corners of the space it occupies.
So this is hardly novel; in fact, one of the best-selling games in the world is based on spaces vs intersections. Can you guess which one I mean? Well can you? NOT A REAL GAMER ARE YOU THEN, [audience still not found]? I’m talking of course about Catan! Now, aside from the Robber, there aren’t a lot of pieces that move from space to space, but you still have the two planes of the board: the spaces, which have a geographic type and generate resources based on the die roll; and the grid, which can have buildings at the intersections connected by roads along the lines. Never the twain do meet, and how could they? It’s a preindustrial setting. As the player, your puny pieces can only exist around the periphery of the landscape, and at best, you can put a collar around a geographical feature, or stifle its output, but you can never alter or shift the landscape itself.
That’s an advantage to exploring the multi-plane of Spaces and/vs Intersections; You can easily imply a hierarchy, between mutable vs immutable, or fast vs slow, direct vs indirect. You could create a naval battle where the carriers move between spaces but the fighter jets move along the intersections; a programming game wherein components occupy spaces but current creates and moves along paths inbetween; civilizations might crawl through octagons while philosophies dart through the squares that connect them.
There are other ways to continue to flesh out this mechanic. Perhaps one type of game piece can move freely between spaces or intersections while the other is, Flatland-like, hopelessly bound to its own plane; perhaps pieces can be laid sideways to change their plane; perhaps perhaps perhaps. Lots to explore here. Just another assumption that, when questioned, can yield many interesting answers.
Okay must run, do enjoy, see you next week maybe.
And write this dreck up I suppose welcome back [no audience found] to another riveting installment of mEcHaNiC mOnDaY!
A quick thought on the intent behind this series: I’m writing this for many reasons, not least of which is to procrastinate from writing the play I’m supposed to be working on, but also in reaction to a lot of games writing that’s currently out there, which is very much Applied and not Theoretical. By that of course I mostly mean commercial. Amidst this board game boom, there’s an emphasis on getting to a finished product, as we’re currently in a mad scramble to capitalize on this bubble of popularity that I think most of us subconsciously know is due to burst any minute now. And I don’t begrudge this mindset: It’s not for me, but if you want to hustle that hustle, then by all means, get that paper, and I’d also reiterate that ideas are worthless without iteration, so whatever motivates you to test and refine those ideas, have the fuck at. At a recent playtest event though (Playtest Party by The Logan Theatre and The Nerdologues) I told people many times over as I demo’d Birch Crown, that I have less than zero ambition to go pro at this. It’s pure intellectual stimulation for me, and to shackle that to the grind for miniscule profits is one fool’s errand I’ll gladly skip.
All this is to say, I lean away HARD from trying to fall in line with conventional wisdom or marketability or accessibility (in the sense of like theme or difficulty level; physical accessibility is a worthy consideration that creates enjoyable design challenges), and I’m not trying to force a narrative of “and THIS is how you design,” or, “and this mechanic works best for x and is wrong to use for y”. A lot of what I mull over is not intended as an argument, or even tangibly useful, but not a lot of people are exploring these dead ends and blind alleys, so it’s fun for me to wander down them, poking and pushing. So hopefully, if you [repeat: no audience found] disagree with my approach in any or all of these articles, rest assured that it’s not meant as dogma, it really is just the mutterings of a harmless dabbler.
What a weird thing to write, and an even weirder thing to leave in, but it’s already 5 and I don’t care enough to go back and edit. On to the mechanic!
Today we’re going to talk abstract boardgames and we return to the well of Subverted Assumptions, with: Spaces and Intersections. A perfectly reasonable gaming assumption is that all pieces of a game occupy the same spaces; there are no spaces on the chessboard that are off-limits to any piece of either side. This creates the idea that the spaces are all equal; the difference in colour is a visual aid for movement types, but in actuality, the grid is a neutral one that can ultimately be occupied by any piece (ok I THINK bishops break this rule in Chess but you catch my drift) and all of the game’s pieces move through these functionally identical spaces. A subversion immediately presents itself: What if the spaces are not neutral? What if you have Rosette spaces or spaces of different colour, negative spaces that are holes in the board, spaces with different properties and different rules? For today’s mechanic, let’s take that one step further; what if some pieces stick to the spaces, but others play on the intersections between them?
I recently re-read The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson, and such is my enjoyment of the book that I made a re-theme of Birch Crown (The Fairer Crown), and also tooled around with bringing to life a game from the world of the book, “the game of rule”, wherein pawns control land and nobles draw strength from pawns. That immediately suggested to me that the pieces should be in different planes, like this
Spaces and Intersections
Your pawns are played onto intersections of the gameboard grid, and may only move along the lines of the grid; Your nobles are played onto the spaces of the grid, and may only move across lines into other spaces. A noble has strength equal to the number of pawn-occupied intersections at the corners of the space it occupies.
So this is hardly novel; in fact, one of the best-selling games in the world is based on spaces vs intersections. Can you guess which one I mean? Well can you? NOT A REAL GAMER ARE YOU THEN, [audience still not found]? I’m talking of course about Catan! Now, aside from the Robber, there aren’t a lot of pieces that move from space to space, but you still have the two planes of the board: the spaces, which have a geographic type and generate resources based on the die roll; and the grid, which can have buildings at the intersections connected by roads along the lines. Never the twain do meet, and how could they? It’s a preindustrial setting. As the player, your puny pieces can only exist around the periphery of the landscape, and at best, you can put a collar around a geographical feature, or stifle its output, but you can never alter or shift the landscape itself.
That’s an advantage to exploring the multi-plane of Spaces and/vs Intersections; You can easily imply a hierarchy, between mutable vs immutable, or fast vs slow, direct vs indirect. You could create a naval battle where the carriers move between spaces but the fighter jets move along the intersections; a programming game wherein components occupy spaces but current creates and moves along paths inbetween; civilizations might crawl through octagons while philosophies dart through the squares that connect them.
There are other ways to continue to flesh out this mechanic. Perhaps one type of game piece can move freely between spaces or intersections while the other is, Flatland-like, hopelessly bound to its own plane; perhaps pieces can be laid sideways to change their plane; perhaps perhaps perhaps. Lots to explore here. Just another assumption that, when questioned, can yield many interesting answers.
Okay must run, do enjoy, see you next week maybe.
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