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Tabletop: Analog Game Design
In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Some have chosen to write about their design process, others about games they admire, others about the culture of tabletop games and their fans. The results are various and individual, but all cast some light on what is a multivarious and fascinating set of game styles.
208 pages, Paperback
First published August 7, 2011
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153 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 9, 2014
Tabletop: Analog Game Design is, like almost every anthology or festschrift I’ve perused, a mixed bag. Most of the chapters or essays were relevant to courses that I teach and many of them were simply interesting to me as a gamer who often teaches or adapts games for others. Best of all, the publisher decided to make this volume available for free on the Amazon Kindle. I would have rated this book four stars if I’d paid full price; as a freebie where I received MUCH more than I paid for, I rate it five stars. I love the authors assembled and respect the editors tremendously.
One of the classics in the tabletop game hobby is Britannia, a multi-player game that was already considered excellent before it was revised and brought back into print within the last few years, a game that has a very active tournament in the annual World Boardgame Championships. The designer of this game, Lewis Pulsipher, a terrific designer and prolific game critic/analyst, was the lead-off batter for this collection. His essay, “The Three-Player Problem,” was a fascinating exploration of the problem of multi-player games where one only has three players as opposed to more. If one has more than three players, balance often takes care of itself. With only three, one player can quickly be reduced to irrelevant or forced to be a “kingmaker” or “spoiler.”
So, Pulsipher makes some interesting proposals to fix the tendency: 1) creating a victory point system where the winner must have 20 points or so more than the next highest player so no one knows when the game will end (p. 19); 2) a card that is drawn which has a victory condition for one (or all) of the nations which equals an automatic game end (forcing the other players to thwart the player who seems closest to the end lest that card show up—p. 20); and 3) avoid designs (like Risk) where one can concentrate large forces (p. 23).
In addition, he observes that the best way to keep a person from “turtling” (the process of waiting till the other two players reduce the strength of each other so that one can sweep in and take all of the objectives much more easily than usual) is to create a zero-sum game so that one can only gain units by taking objectives from another. This means that you have to be active in order to gain strength, so turtling is not an option (p. 23).
My second favorite article or essay was Chris Klug’s analysis of “Dice as Dramaturge.” I very much agreed with his touting of RuneQuest as a marvelous system where conflict resolution was handled on a percentage basis (1-100). Even though the system used different types of polyhedral dice, the system kept all conflict resolution to that one-hundred point scale whether one was hitting in combat or determining where, on one’s opponent’s torso, the blow actually struck. Klug expressed appreciation for “Critical Success” and “Special Success” rolls, as well as “Fumble.” (p. 43) Using this approach, one gets more satisfying results because there is a sense (on a one-hundred point scale) of how successful or unsuccessful one has been because the scale is so readily understandable for all types of resolution needed in a game.
Matthew Berland’s essay on “Understanding Strategic Boardgames as Computational-Thinking Training Machines” offered an intriguing perspective on how boardgames provide an educational opportunity through their transparency. Citing research which demonstrates that students and players learn much more effectively when they teach others how to play the games and when they are virtual designers of games through modifying the rules. “In an informal survey of frequent gamers, most of them adapt the rules—if sometimes only slightly—of every single strategic boardgame that they routinely play. As such, boardgamers routinely trend towards game design, which is itself a key mode of learning computational literacy.” (p. 175).
Another intriguing essay was one on games as “improvisational.” I particularly liked Brenda Bakker Harger’s definition of story. She advocates that gaming is tantamount to improvisational theater in that one is provided with a set-up and then, interactively and spontaneously solves one or more problems. Her synthesis of what makes a story is the following pattern: “Once upon a time…” set against “Everyday…” with an exceptional “But one day…” and its resulting “Because of this…” mixed with the climactic “Until finally…” and the conclusion “And ever since then…” with, sometimes, the obvious “The moral of the story is…” (p. 189)
In addition to these essays, James F. Dunnigan expounded upon simulation design, one designer talked about some practical aspects of attempting to publish, another designer shared about Reiner Knizia’s success, and another essayist analyzed the success of Settlers of Catan. Richard Garfield, designer of Magic: The Gathering, offered design lessons from Poker and game historian David Parlett looked at abstract strategy games. In short, Tabletop: Analog Game Design is a well-balanced offering that is well worth the effort of finding the eBook (or even purchasing the bound version). I was extremely pleased with this effort.
One of the classics in the tabletop game hobby is Britannia, a multi-player game that was already considered excellent before it was revised and brought back into print within the last few years, a game that has a very active tournament in the annual World Boardgame Championships. The designer of this game, Lewis Pulsipher, a terrific designer and prolific game critic/analyst, was the lead-off batter for this collection. His essay, “The Three-Player Problem,” was a fascinating exploration of the problem of multi-player games where one only has three players as opposed to more. If one has more than three players, balance often takes care of itself. With only three, one player can quickly be reduced to irrelevant or forced to be a “kingmaker” or “spoiler.”
So, Pulsipher makes some interesting proposals to fix the tendency: 1) creating a victory point system where the winner must have 20 points or so more than the next highest player so no one knows when the game will end (p. 19); 2) a card that is drawn which has a victory condition for one (or all) of the nations which equals an automatic game end (forcing the other players to thwart the player who seems closest to the end lest that card show up—p. 20); and 3) avoid designs (like Risk) where one can concentrate large forces (p. 23).
In addition, he observes that the best way to keep a person from “turtling” (the process of waiting till the other two players reduce the strength of each other so that one can sweep in and take all of the objectives much more easily than usual) is to create a zero-sum game so that one can only gain units by taking objectives from another. This means that you have to be active in order to gain strength, so turtling is not an option (p. 23).
My second favorite article or essay was Chris Klug’s analysis of “Dice as Dramaturge.” I very much agreed with his touting of RuneQuest as a marvelous system where conflict resolution was handled on a percentage basis (1-100). Even though the system used different types of polyhedral dice, the system kept all conflict resolution to that one-hundred point scale whether one was hitting in combat or determining where, on one’s opponent’s torso, the blow actually struck. Klug expressed appreciation for “Critical Success” and “Special Success” rolls, as well as “Fumble.” (p. 43) Using this approach, one gets more satisfying results because there is a sense (on a one-hundred point scale) of how successful or unsuccessful one has been because the scale is so readily understandable for all types of resolution needed in a game.
Matthew Berland’s essay on “Understanding Strategic Boardgames as Computational-Thinking Training Machines” offered an intriguing perspective on how boardgames provide an educational opportunity through their transparency. Citing research which demonstrates that students and players learn much more effectively when they teach others how to play the games and when they are virtual designers of games through modifying the rules. “In an informal survey of frequent gamers, most of them adapt the rules—if sometimes only slightly—of every single strategic boardgame that they routinely play. As such, boardgamers routinely trend towards game design, which is itself a key mode of learning computational literacy.” (p. 175).
Another intriguing essay was one on games as “improvisational.” I particularly liked Brenda Bakker Harger’s definition of story. She advocates that gaming is tantamount to improvisational theater in that one is provided with a set-up and then, interactively and spontaneously solves one or more problems. Her synthesis of what makes a story is the following pattern: “Once upon a time…” set against “Everyday…” with an exceptional “But one day…” and its resulting “Because of this…” mixed with the climactic “Until finally…” and the conclusion “And ever since then…” with, sometimes, the obvious “The moral of the story is…” (p. 189)
In addition to these essays, James F. Dunnigan expounded upon simulation design, one designer talked about some practical aspects of attempting to publish, another designer shared about Reiner Knizia’s success, and another essayist analyzed the success of Settlers of Catan. Richard Garfield, designer of Magic: The Gathering, offered design lessons from Poker and game historian David Parlett looked at abstract strategy games. In short, Tabletop: Analog Game Design is a well-balanced offering that is well worth the effort of finding the eBook (or even purchasing the bound version). I was extremely pleased with this effort.
September 19, 2012
Some people like to play games. Some go further and like to talk about games, their relative flaws and benefits, stuff like that. Then there's those who maybe err on the side of the obsessive - game designers, game tinkerers, game theorists, and those (like me) who like to kick the tyres, pop the hood and check out how the games work.*
Tabletop is a collection of essays about games, some by game designers, some by hood-poppers. While the essays were uneven in style and content, running for academic in tone to more practical this-is-how-I-solved-problem-X, overall it's an entertaining read (if you're a hood-popper). I would say I took something away from nearly every essay in the set, which, if you've read essay collections before, you'll know is a rare thing.
This is NOT a casual read, by any means. But if you think there's more to games than chess, or at the other end of the spectrum, first-person shooters, you'll probably find something of interest here.
NOTE: I read this on my Kindle (99c from Amazon.com), and liked it so much that I bought the hard-copy edition (which has all the charts and pictures missing from the Kindle version).
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* There's a fourth kind of person - those who, for whatever reason, don't like games and are usually quite dismissive of them. If you ignore those people long enough they'll usually go away and find someone else to annoy.
Tabletop is a collection of essays about games, some by game designers, some by hood-poppers. While the essays were uneven in style and content, running for academic in tone to more practical this-is-how-I-solved-problem-X, overall it's an entertaining read (if you're a hood-popper). I would say I took something away from nearly every essay in the set, which, if you've read essay collections before, you'll know is a rare thing.
This is NOT a casual read, by any means. But if you think there's more to games than chess, or at the other end of the spectrum, first-person shooters, you'll probably find something of interest here.
NOTE: I read this on my Kindle (99c from Amazon.com), and liked it so much that I bought the hard-copy edition (which has all the charts and pictures missing from the Kindle version).
------------------
* There's a fourth kind of person - those who, for whatever reason, don't like games and are usually quite dismissive of them. If you ignore those people long enough they'll usually go away and find someone else to annoy.
November 15, 2018
Since there are various approaches to Game Design, it should come as no surprise that a collection of essays written by game designers and others within the industry would have a wide range of subject matter and quality. And there in lies the main problem with this book, there are some excellent essays and others that are very weak.
If you have any interest in Game Design then you are going to want to have a look at this, however, if you have already read some of the better texts on the subject, than this one will only be used to satiate a desire to read something about Game Design. Make no mistake, there are pearls of wisdom throughout, though like many treasures, you have to dig through the debris to find the reward.
If you have any interest in Game Design then you are going to want to have a look at this, however, if you have already read some of the better texts on the subject, than this one will only be used to satiate a desire to read something about Game Design. Make no mistake, there are pearls of wisdom throughout, though like many treasures, you have to dig through the debris to find the reward.
August 30, 2017
As an anthology this is a mixed bag running from on-target, succinct chapters chock full of good advice and long-winded pseudo-intellectual rambling. Worth reading for the better chapters/authors if you are interested in game design. You can probably figure out which chapter is which within the first 2 pages.
Read
January 12, 2017A 2011 title with chapters written by game designers on various aspects of board game design. A fine compendium (marred only by the unnecessarily long chapter on the Game-As-Performance-Art "Train") worthy of the attention of anyone interested in modern-day board games and board game design.
August 15, 2012
I loved the idea of having a bunch of people write about various aspects of gaming, mainly game design, but this book really needed an editor.
The articles were written but they didn't feel like a writer them because they weren't written very well. They felt more like extremely long blog posts. More often than not, they just babbled and babbled on in minute detail. It became very boring because of all that detail, but the biggest problem was I forgot what their point was. There was one interesting article about a father who created games for his kids. After the third one, it just became very tiresome to read.
I have no idea if there was an editor that overlooked this. It didn't felt like one, but if there was she could have shortened and tightened the articles. That would have made for a great read.
Also, there were a couple of formatting issues. Indentation, spacing, etc. all seem to be out of whack occasionally. It wasn't too distracting, but it was still there. There were also a few parts that were repeated or maybe it just felt that way. And I didn't understand why the table of contents was in the back for a non-fiction book.
If you want a far superior book on game design read The Game Inventor's Handbook instead.
The articles were written but they didn't feel like a writer them because they weren't written very well. They felt more like extremely long blog posts. More often than not, they just babbled and babbled on in minute detail. It became very boring because of all that detail, but the biggest problem was I forgot what their point was. There was one interesting article about a father who created games for his kids. After the third one, it just became very tiresome to read.
I have no idea if there was an editor that overlooked this. It didn't felt like one, but if there was she could have shortened and tightened the articles. That would have made for a great read.
Also, there were a couple of formatting issues. Indentation, spacing, etc. all seem to be out of whack occasionally. It wasn't too distracting, but it was still there. There were also a few parts that were repeated or maybe it just felt that way. And I didn't understand why the table of contents was in the back for a non-fiction book.
If you want a far superior book on game design read The Game Inventor's Handbook instead.
April 18, 2013
This was not as good as I hoped it would be, especially since most of the book has little to do with the title, but not too many other books about this subject are free, so it was worth the cost, at least. Some of the articles on design are good, though none of them really go into the detail and depth of the processes of design a fledgling designer wants, assuming they are living in the 21st century and not hanging around SPI in 1975 getting a daily practicum on the dos and don'ts of wargaming design. Some of the reviews and analyses of different games in the middle section are helpful, others are not. This is a mixed bag of interesting essays, educational essays, and the piffle one usually finds in "academic" collections of essays. The last thing, the nonsense about improv, has truly nothing to do with tabletop gaming. It does not belong here. Overall it was a nice collection, but it has left me somewhat disappointed. It should have had a lot more to do with "analog game design," and not just "here is what was going on in my life while I was designing and playing these games."
September 4, 2011
A dry but engaging collection of essays exploring various principles of game design. The essays collected here look at the improvisational aspects of RPGs, the principles at work in the design of games like Settlers of Catan and Pandemic, and how wargames are built different depending on what goals they're trying to illustrate.
Great if you're curious about game design. Might not be worth your time otherwise.
Great if you're curious about game design. Might not be worth your time otherwise.
October 17, 2014
A mixed bag of essays, not leading to any overall conclusions but offering a few interesting tit-bits of advice or entertaining anecdotes. I suspect any reader interested in the general subject will find bits that are of no interest at all, although which bits those are will differ from one person to another.
August 12, 2011
mixed quality. some essays were great, like "I designed a game for my kids every year using different mechanics and here's how I did it". Others seemed to be thinly veiled humblebrags about "I designed this game/product/service and it is objectively the best".
April 6, 2016
Being a collection of papers, it's difficult to capture a whole philosophy within this boo but I've found it quite interesting because it highlights some good starting points to go deep into the subject of Tabletop game design.
September 11, 2011
A collection of essays by some of the outstanding game designers of our time. The range of topics varies quite a bit, and a few of the essays were not that great.
Want to read
April 5, 2016I mostly choose this because he used the term analog game design and I want to explore what he means by that - because I use that term too.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews