"Space" or geography in games, and a twist on engine building? (also, YANGI)

 In the last few days, I had 2 separate interactions on twitter, which I've sort of combined to form Yet Another New Game Idea (YANGI!)

"Space" or geography in games

I was discussing "space" in games with Keith Burgun, author of Clockwork Game Design, and host of a podcast with that same name (though actually, he just rebranded the podcast to a much less good title: Strategy Can Be Fun?). Keith comes from a videogame background, and I think he was mostly talking about space in open world RPGs, or maybe grid-based tactics games, but I likened it to "geography" in tabletop board games as well. I said there's something nice about geography in a tabletop game... Otherwise, it doesn't really need a tabletop!

In many worker placement games, the board is just an array of action spaces. It's convenient to see what's been taken, because there are pieces sitting on the spaces, but in most of those games the geography of the spaces is not important at all. It could be interesting (and thematically strong) if the geography of the board mattered more.

Keith suggested that if you have "space," you need enough of it to really do something with it. Like if it's just five spaces or something, that's kinda not enough, that's more like just menu options. He cited a videogame I'm not familiar with, saying it had a 5x5 grid, and that's just barely enough to feel like space. He summed up by saying

The trick to space is, create enough space that players feel like it's a space and they can do things with it, BUT ALSO make the whole thing feel meaningful and not just like a plodding chore to move around on

I agree with that last statement, but of course I got a little semantic about the size needed to "feel like space" -- the space needs to be big enough to be interesting, but not so big as to have wasted space (whether that's a 5x5 grid, or even just 5 spaces). The amount of space you need in order to feel like it's "enough" depends on how far your units can move at a time. 5x5 is nothing if you can move 8 spaces, but it's huge if you can only move 1!

So, bottom line: I wouldn't mind seeing more non-trivial geography in board games.

A Twist on Engine Building?

Separately, I saw a twitter thread from Jeff Warrender, author of You Said This Would Be Fun, and designer of Sands of Time and his new self-published Acts of the Evangelists [BGG link], listing off some of his random game ideas, just for fun. One of those sparked my interest:

Engine-builder where cards don't synergize with each other, they synergize with locations on the board. But we share a conveyance, and thus our engines don't get "fuel" at the same rate.

 

My response off the top of my head:

This could be cool... basically playing cards to your tableau that boost the effects of different locations, then vying to get the group to visit the locations you have cards in play for Stack up a couple locations with tons of effects and risk not going to them? Or play cards everywhere, ensuring you always get a decent (if not amazing) action?

I'm not sure that actually constitutes a "twist" on engine building, but in case the common perception of it is building a tableau of cards that synergize with each other," maybe relating them to a geographic game board is somewhat novel. 

YANGI

Then I started thinking of how these concepts could apply to a boardgame. For example, I could think of a few ways that geography could come into a worker placement game... 

• Making adjacency matter 
• Limiting movement, so your options are limited (like a Rondel)
• Making resolution order matter (like Caylus)

I came up with this example structure for a game that considered some of this spatial/geographic stuff, and employed Jeff's idea about engine building that incorporates the game's geography:

• Say we as players are in a group, so we travel together in a van or something. 
• There's a board with some number of towns (maybe 7-10?), each connected to 2 others (like maybe they're in a circle, and you can only drive around the circle) 
• Say each town has a main action and a sub-action (lesser version of the main action, or just a less strong action) 
• On your turn, you may move the van to an adjacent town, then you get to do the main action of that town, and the sub-action of one adjacent town

Then I thought about combining those thoughts with the idea from Jeff's twitter thread: 

Maybe one thing you can do is play cards into your personal tableau, which make certain towns better for you...

• When you get the main action of town A, also get THING
• When you get the sub-action of town A, also get LESSER THING
• When ANYONE gets the main action of town A, get THING

Stuff like that. In general, you could stack several effects up on each of a couple of towns, making those super good for you, or you could play cards to all the towns sort of evenly, so you always get some good stuff, even if nothing super-amazing.

I haven't really got a good theme for this yet, which undoubtedly means I'm stalled until I think of one, or until someone suggests one :)

And because I feel like there aren't enough bulleted lists in this post, here are some ideas for groups that travel together:

• Traveling players, like the company in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
• A band on tour
• A family or group of friends on a road trip
• A family or group at Disneyland
• Students on a field trip