4 1/2 Writing Lessons Learned from the Boardgame Design Realm

On Instagram I finally changed my bio away from coal-mining stuff. It now says "Boardgamer. Also a writer." Little bit of modesty maybe in putting writing second, but boardgames is a huge love of mine. I spend as much time as I can get away with playing games, and when I can't I'm still consuming bg-related media, especially podcasts. I dipped a toe in the boardgame designer space though only as, at best, a tertiary hobby. Writing is the thing I am best at so I am choosing to focus on that. But, here are some lessons I've gleaned from over there that I think translates pretty well to the writing life, since both are, after all, about creativity.

1. Rapid Iteration: the doctrine in bg-design is to prototype rapidly. Have an idea? Cobble something together out of lint and whatever other odds and ends you have laying around and get something to the table, just to see if the idea is any fun and worth pursuing. Doesn't have to be pretty- in fact, making it pretty is a waste of time at this point in the process. I have a story in 40 Below Volume 2 that I wrote in one sitting and that didn't require any revision. I know, right? Why can't it always be so easy? I want it to be, but waiting for that to happen is actually hindrance, and I've started just writing a fast first draft by hand in a notebook, not worrying about making it polished at all. This tells you right away if you have a story worth working on. And it counts as writing, I think. Maybe even the most important kind of writing. 

2. Playtesting. There's this one podcast I listen to, the Board Game Design Lab, where if you made a drinking game out of every time they say "playtesting"you would die of alcohol poisoning in like five minutes. Playtesting means getting as many people as possible to play your (now much more polished) prototype so they can give you feedback, including feedback such as 'This game really sucks!'. Once you have a working draft get as many beta-readers and proofreaders as possible before sending it away. This is kind of tricky though, since reading someone's unfinal work isn't a huge priority for a lot of people. In playtesting it's the same problem so the advice is be a generous playtester so that you aren't always saying "hey try my game I gotta go bye!" Offer to read other writers' work. But offer good feedback too, which is a whole skill all on its own, for sure.

3. Play a Lot of Games: this is the best homework ever. Heck yeah I'll play a lot of games to learn about how to make them! The parallel is obvious- read widely. Read lots. Just read. It will make you a better writer. When I was a kid and read The Lord of the Rings for the first time, I immediately wrote my first stab at a fantasy story- it was about these creatures (that looked just like the mystics from The Dark Crystal which I also loved) who had.... ten rings.... and they had to . . . you know. . . probably destroy the rings so the dark lord . . . of course it was crap. Read read read and not just the same type of thing you love already, branch out and read stuff you wouldn't otherwise be interested in. It all goes into your mental cauldron and the soup that comes out is yum and unique to you.

4. Steal, copy, pillage and plunder. In boardgames, there are only so many gameplay mechanics, and though innovation does happen, it is completely acceptable to design a worker placement game about vikings even though there are already a ton of worker placement games about vikings. Maybe replace Vikings with zombies. But you take from here and you take from there and remix it and now it's new. This is ok in the bg industry. 

BUT

4 1/2 Make sure the best part of your game isn't something you stole from another game: Don't just reskin a game and sell it. Plagiarism is bad. As in my example with the ten-ring mystic creatures, simple regurgitation isn't cool. Add something new, something unique to bring to your story. You have a unique voice, and I want to hear it! This advice I can attribute directly to JB Howell, whose game Reavers of Midgard (a worker placement game about vikings!) is pictured below.