How to use theme in boardgames.

In my earlier discussion on theme and plot, I pointed out that in a film, theme was unimportant except to induce plot – being moments of dilemma and decision by a character. And is then discarded. Like a squeezed orange peel. Same goes for games. 

And we can see this in abstract games with no theme at all – Chess, Go, Uno, Cards Against Humanity. The only theme Cards Against Humanity has or needs is a black box with the words ‘Against Humanity’ on it, inviting bad taste and inviting participants to lower their moral expectations of their friends and themselves. Any further instalment of theme would be a hindrance to the plot, which is for the players for decide how to squeeze the maximum of humour from their hand of cards.

Theme is to be kept to a minimum, before it overruns a game. This doesn’t stop first-time designers from overloading with theme. Much of which becomes not theme at all.

If I were designing a game to accurately re-enact some piece of history, and felt compelled to include every detail of that event in the order in which they happen, I no longer have theme, I have nostalgia. Same goes for film tie-ins or childhood activities. These details do nothing but get in the way.

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. These plot cards need not take place in the order they happened in real life, nor affect the territories that it affected in history. They need not happen at all. Global thermonuclear meltdown can happen in the game, which I don’t recall happening in real life.

But that threat – that the world could end in a puff of plutonium – is only possible if the event could happen in the game. It creates tension. At the threat increases, breaths shorten, eyes widen as we feel the impending doom of a very bad day.

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 cannot eat takoyaki again.
Ah, gakkarida.

THAT is theme. Theme helped us identify why we feel a bit jumpy at this moment, and relieved at another. Theme channels and directs our drama, holds something accountable for our emotions.

These are the experiences we play for, and this I what theme can do. Plot gets them invested and makes them take a path, but theme – the emotions, the experiences – is the juice we were waiting for. It is worth including if you know what theme is. It is not the designer showing off how much research he can do about the topic, it is about welling up and directing the emotions as coming from an element of the game.

Try doing that, Chess!