A Weighty Experience in Tabletop Gaming

A group of my friends played Veiled Fate from iV Studios a few years ago (picture courteous of Geoff).

A lot of my background comes from working professionally in the education space, focusing directly on the learning experience for both students and instructors. One of my huge passions is tabletop gaming; from playing board games to trading card games and everything in between, it is one of my favorite pastimes. As I've gotten older, the reason I've connected more with tabletop rather than my video gaming years in my youth is that tabletop allows us to create our own learning experience you get that's akin to what you receive in an educational environment in a face-to-face environment.

A lot of my friends know how important game balance is to me. I have definitely gotten on my high horse a few times about it, but the reality is a balanced board game creates a better experience overall for folks. It's not just the actual gameplay making players feel they have a chance. It also is the experience outside of the game when it comes to the environment, time sink, and additional emotional factors that are brought to the table that could overall enhance or damage someone's opinion about tabletop gaming. Just like with education, a balanced experience across how someone learns helps keep them engaged. Too easy of a learning experience makes it so a learner does not feel as if they are getting anything out of the class. Making it too difficult makes the course feel like an impossible mountain to climb, and they give up too quickly and only get to experience some of the course. The perfect middle ground is needed to elevate that experience.

Now, when I talk about game balancing, it's not 1 to 1 with what I'm talking about with course difficulty. Balancing in a game is making sure the gameplay mechanics are easy to understand but not too easy where there is no depth. I'm going to cover just one pillar today: how the weight of a tabletop experience and the way it is onboarded to players can affect its longevity in the space as well as its enjoyment.

Game Weight

Before we jump into the heart of the reading here, I want to set up a term in tabletop called weight. Weight is different from how heavy the board game box is, although sometimes that can be 1 to 1. Weight is a common term used to describe how complex a game is to learn as well as play. It's the amount of systems in place, the choices a player can make, and the overall strategy that is developed from all of the concepts. As you add more of this, the weight of the game increases. Visit the popular board game repository BoardGameGeek. You can actually see how the community rates board games in a weighted score out of 5, with the higher score being a heavier game. As I mention games throughout this reading, I'd recommend checking them out via the links provided.

A screenshot from BoardGameGeek showcasing the weight of a game. Oath is VERY heavy! (In both in complexity and actual box weight. Its a big box).

Alright, now let's dive in.

Information Overload

Whether it's remembering to pay the electric bill, feed the dog, or that meeting for work, there is a lot of information we have to keep track of on a daily basis. When it comes to a learning environment, we have to ensure we keep track of how much information we give to a user at once. If I throw a test at a student in week 1 requiring them to process information from 5 chapters of a textbook, you can bet those students are going to chuck books back at me. You do need depth to have folks continue to engage with the material though. Teaching adults basic math is going to have them incredibly disengaged, but slowly introducing more complicated algebra problems and how you would realistically use them in your industry will help allow the learner to take that knowledge and then start applying it to their future endeavors. From my time teaching software engineering, it was very important to showcase basic looping logic with something like a while/for loop, but then find more efficient ways to loop through data such as .map or .forEach after the core loop concepts sank in as well as their knowledge of arrays. If I kept using for loops for all of the content, it would become quite boring because the depth of what a for loop can do in an educational environment could be much higher.

Many tabletop games are littered with information overload issues. First, games are meant for enjoyment. You are asking someone to not only learn the rules and teach them to other players but also make sure to understand all of the minor rules and strategies that should be applied. All of this information is compiled with all the typical day-to-day worries of making dinner and walking the dog. It is a lot to ask upfront. Especially with first-time teaching, a game that should normally take 45 minutes can take almost 2 hours because of rules clarifications because there is so much to keep track of.

One of the infamous examples of this with an excellent game that I also enjoy is Root from Leder games. For those unaware, Root is a war game that involves woodland creatures as each faction tries to score points by crafting items and destroying enemy buildings. On paper, that sounds simple. However, each faction of critters has an asymmetric way they approaching their game plan. Asymmetric powers in games are very common, granting an ability that is unique to just the player, but typically, it's just modifying a single rule. Each faction's turn is COMPLETELY different from the other, so players cannot get in the rhythm of a turn by watching other players. The complexity of learning a faction is alleviated some, as the player boards walk a player through the turn step by step. Even with that assistance, players are still grasping the rules for crafting, moving, battling, and each faction's abilities to be aware of when planning out their turns. Root is one of the best-designed wargames because of its depth, as shown by its high ranking of all board games on BoardGame Geek (as of the time of this writing, 31#). However, this makes the game super overwhelming for players to learn the game for the first time. Not only do they learn the core mechanics, but they have to learn their faction strategies, as well as their opponent's factions and how to counter them. It's information overload. Leder Games next big project, Oath, pushed information overload even further, to the point the game includes a rulebook specifically walking players through their first turn for a pre-scripted first game, helping players explain why they would do certain things. While both of these games offer a glossary book of information to help folks understand specific mechanics, when I get done working for the day, the last thing I want to do is have to explain and learn strategies of a game that requires me to learn almost another language.

Image of players engaging in a game of Root. Image Provided from Board Game Geek

Simply Deep

As I mentioned, though, games need depth in order to be long-lasting. Root provides incredible depth that will last lifetimes. There is a reason that nobody talks about Candy Land or Monopoly anymore in tabletop space because those games do not offer the amount of lifetime depth and strategy to have folks come back for future plays. Candy Land is a huge example of this. There needs to be more depth when drawing a card and moving to the next space based on the card revealed. Everything is predetermined. Players do not get to make real choices. Monopoly only changes this slightly by players getting to make a possible choice when landing on a space they don't own or investing in pre-existing property. Regardless, both of those options are in the hope that a player lands on the space and has to pay up. In theory, a player can make all the right investment choices, but the die roll can make it completely a waste of the brain power you used to make those choices. Without the depth, nobody returns to an experience after more than 1 play.

What is a good example of this? Luckily, there are many, and there are two that exist on both sides of the weight score, one light and one heavy.

The first one I want to highlight is a dice-placement game called Brew from Pandasarus Games. The game has players rolling a set of dice in their color and using the face-up symbols, placing them in different areas in hopes of claiming territories and brewing potions. There is a lot of depth in how the players should place their dice. Do I gain resources? Do I brew potions? Gain forest critters? Do I somehow screw over my opponent with the placement of my dice? There's a lot there, but gameplay revolves around you doing one simple thing: placing your die. Thats it. All of the information load goes into the strategy rather than learning how the game operates. It makes for an exciting game as everyone is always involved as the rules click very quickly and players are now engrossed in strategizing rather than understanding. Just like with learning, you want folks to spend time on how to use the tools they just learned more than learning to use the tool. It makes an overall more engaging experience that definitely asks you to play or engage more than once.

Brew being played. Image provided from BoardGameGeek

Ark Nova’s components all laid out. Image Provided by BoardGameGeek

The second game is probably not a shocker, depending on how much you are into tabletop games, but it's Ark Nova from Capstone Games. This game is all about building a zoo that is both popular but also scientifically accurate. Basically Zoo Tycoon in simpler terms. Since its release in 2021, it has become one of the most popular tabletop games for every level of tabletop gamers. Its weight on BoardGameGeek is quite heavy, sitting at a 3.76/5 currently. How could a complex game break into the mainstream of tabletop gamers?

The truth is, Ark Nova is not a complex game to play, and its design also helps other players teach one another how to execute the different actions thanks to its 1 action turn system (see the pattern with Brew here). Actions are directly referenced on cards a player has in front of them that also directly affect the gameplay, so you're constantly reminded of them at all times. Looking at the image of Ark Nova in this article, you're probably wondering, how Luke can you be saying this? That looks complicated!

Ark Nova, like Brew, is a very simple game to play in its ruleset. There is a little more rules overhead than Brew, but only a little. The weight of the game is all in the strategy. Every decision a player makes has a ton of consequences that could have lasting positive or negative effects on their playthrough. Rather than putting all the weight in the ruleset of how to play the game, players put all of the weight into the strategic choices being made. It gives players more control, as they feel like they understand how to execute the actions available and then get to see the immediate consequences. It is like paying your electric bill online. It makes the process much simpler, and you get to immediately know the bill is paid, unlike if you paid ia mailing the check to the electric company. Being able to impact in a big way without much onboarding is what makes Ark Nova successful in the current tabletop market.

Concluding

I'm very passionate about onboarding experiences, from how you onboard someone into a new topic. It's one of my favorite parts of being in the education system, and it's most likely why, when it comes to game nights, I'm the one usually teaching the games. While I know I'm a decent teacher, having a game that has mechanics that make it easy to teach really helps that process. Not only that, it helps keep the game coming back to the table as folks were able to cement those concepts into their head after their long work days. A well balanced experience in any medium provides an easy onboarding experience with almost endless depth to keep its users engaged from beginning to end, regardless if it's games or education.