Fantasy in board game design: sugar and spice... and sometimes vinegar.
They flavour a boardgame beyond its natural juices, add zest, heat or sweetness as you, the chef, see fit to add, but they can also overpower a dish that just doesn't need it that much. If at all.Fantasy in board games is set and reinforced by all the components of the game, style and choice of words, pictures, instructions and physical components to describe the setting, the characters, the events, all lend themselves to the experience you are trying to convey to your players.Sushi Go has plenty of sweetness - it's practically a dessert game. Cute images of smiling sushi on every card, none of it salty nor bitter. The two setting elements present in Sushi Go - the setting and the art - compliment each other and give the players an uplifting feeling of lightness and fun with not much at stake.
But at heart, Sushi Go is a pretty fun game mechanic going on there. Some substance, light, but not just candy.
City of Horror is bitter, as are most zombie games. Every piece of writing and art, co-ordinated with the mechanics, gives a sour, vinegary taste as you betray your friends and throw them to the hungry horde of gnashing teeth. The fantasy is rich.'Blackbeard' is over-seasoned. It is so rich with detail about the historical accuracy of Caribbean pirates that it is unpalatable to most players. Not only was the game over-salted, but that more meaty mechanics were required to dilute it, and you end up spending more time with the rule book than the play.This is where good game design is put aside for the sake of nostalgia. Film tie-ins can easily suffer the same fate if nothing is left out. Too much spice.On the other hand, there's Twilight Struggle.
Rich with detail, every event of the Cold War is included, and every key position represented. If you’re an American history buff, you might experience nostalgia, but each card can be played as a decision, which affects the game, so it becomes plot.Here, setting did not override mechanics. It enhanced them. There was not a card in there that was included just for the sake of the setting, not that there were any that were outside it. They all had a purpose. Global nuclear meltdown didn't happen in real life, but the fear of it did, and the possibility of it happening in Twilight Struggle gives the game a pinch of pepper.Conversely, in Tokaido, I want my character to have a pleasant experience, which can be projected as coming from having completed a mountain landscape painting, or mild disappointment as I missed the last of the sushi, and I have already eaten takoyaki. No scary spice, just mellow, like I just sipped green tea. In aesthetic game terms, my experience is as relaxing as my character's.There is the emotional pay-off. Losing ourself in the setting, the imaginative world the designer has created has helped us identify why we feel a bit jumpy at this moment, and relieved at another. Fantasy channels and directs our emotions, holds an event in the game accountable for our feelings, lets us experience a little of the emotional life of our character, and do so at a table full of friends.That is the flavour we play for.So add spice to enhance flavour in your game. Not too much, just enough to let everyone at your table enjoy your meal. NB: previously this article used 'theme' as the key word. Theme is something else. Theme is a lot more over-arching than that.I realised later I was talking about setting and fantasy, and re-edited it accordingly.We're all back on track now. We're fine. I'm fine. How are you?