Impossible Themes

I recently discovered, to my delight, that my cable TV company supplies me with a variety of old TV programmes on demand for free. Amongst the inevitable barrage of crap they have on offer there's some great comedy and Band of Brothers and I chose to start using my new service with some episodes of the latter.

If you've never seen Band of Brothers it's a ten-part series made by the same team who put Saving Private Ryan together about a company of US paratroopers in Word War 2. Unlike Saving Private Ryan the series is based on the genuine memoirs of the troopers - in fact each episode is prefaced with short talking-head interviews with the men themselves. It's absolutely brilliant - so brilliant in fact that I managed to get my partner to watch all ten episodes when it was first on even though she espouses complete loathing of all things combat-themed.

One of the brilliant things about it is it's realistic recreation of combat. The scenes are breathless, dangerous, confusing and yet somehow exhilarating, just as I imagine the real thing must be. I stress the word imagine here because of course I have no clear idea of what it would be like and nor, or course, would I want to. But I'm satisfied that at one level watching the programmes gets me as close to the experience as I'd want to be.

Another way in which I can get a different, equally distant angle on the experience combat is through playing video games. Shortly after watching Band of Brothers I picked up the game Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. I'd avoided WW2 first-person shooters before because it seemed to be rather pointless and even somewhat disrespectful to release games of that theme that were so unrealistic in the sense that they let you play a hero-type, ploughing through swathes of Germans unassisted. Brothers in Arms is different - combat is deadly if you don't make use of cover, strategy or the AI-controlled allies that it provides. I think it's a fantastic game, and probably one of the most-played computer games I've ever bought.

Both the TV series and the video game are highly thematic in the sense that when enjoying them I feel completely immersed in the world that they're trying to create for me. I think that both have helped me learn about, and gain new perspectives on, the history of World War 2. In different ways they let me get as close as I'd want to to the lives of the soldiers who fought in the Western Front in that war. I also have a book by John Keegan called The Face of Battle which attempts to do a similar thing by looking at the experiences of soldiers in the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. While not so immersive as computer or TV again, in it's own way, it might be seen as a very thematic experience.

My dealings with WW2 board games on the other hand are decidedly un-thematic, at least in the sense of making me feel like I'm getting closer to the experience of being in combat or even commanding soldiers into combat. There's none of the feeling of fast-paced, dicing-with-death action even at squad level games. Rather the rules and the consideration of decisions and the poring over charts actually completely obscure any feeling of urgency you might derive from the game. You might argue that moving up to the strategic and operational levels might make the game more like the experience of commanding troops but I think not - battlefield command is hugely stressful in a completely different way. I read recently that both supreme commanders in the Battle of Stalingrad suffered with nervous afflictions. Even so, the computer still does a better job of being thematic - I've played a lot of the excellent freeware offering Steel Panthers: WW2 in which the complex mechanics governing movement and combat are all hidden under the hood. This allows a much more realistic simulation thanks both to the way the computer can handle levels of complexity that would swamp a real game and because it stops a commander trying to play the system rather than concentrating on tactics.

This isn't supposed to be a rant against wargames. I understand that in most wargames the focus is on creating a realistic simulation for the purposes of historical "what-if" scenarios rather than of creating an immersive theme. Rather I'm questioning whether theme is really something that boardgames are terribly good at providing - in most cases a boardgame is about learning to play the rules for best advantage, as opposed to live-action and strategy computer games which have the potential to be much more open ended. In a boardgame the rules have to be open, transparent and to some extent simple and short enough to be digestible, all of which leads to an inevitable degree of structure in the approach to play.

So this leaves us with the obvious question of why "theme" is considered such an important quality of AT games. Personally I've always had a slight problem with this definition - I play AT games partly because of the themes they choose rather than because the theme is strong. Rather I have a lot more sympathy with the view expressed by Jezztek in his eloquent definition of ameritrash over at boardgamegeek which emphasises the importance of drama and narrative over theme.

Nevertheless, there are a small handful of boardgames widely regarded as being extremely thematic to play. I want to devote the remainder of this article to looking at those games and perhaps trying to distil out the elements that make them transcend the ordinary strictures of mechanical boardgaming.

Almost inevitably my first pick is one of the pinnacles of AT design, the much-lamented Avalon Hill classic Dune. The theme in this injects itself on a number of levels. Firstly the variable player powers assigned to each house seem to be an excellent reflection of the supposed skills and traits of the various factions seen in the Dune novels. Secondly, and perhaps key in bringing the theme to the game, is the unforgiving and vicious nature of the treachery aspects of game - the intrigue created around the treachery cards and the inevitable stab in the back from your turncoat leader(s) do a fine job of recreating the smoke-and-mirrors paranoia of intergalactic diplomacy. Finally the physical layout of the board, with the rules for worms and storms and such, mimic the environmental factors that soldiers operating of the face of the planet would have to contend with.

My second choice is also one that many of you will probably have guessed in advance, and would get my vote for the most thematic game of all time - Fury of Dracula. Both versions of the game - FFG and GW - are highly thematic, but for me the GW version edges it, and that's what I'm going to focus on in this discussion. There are two things that make this game work for me. First and foremost is the balance between the asymmetrical vampire hunters and the Count himself. The ingenious idea of pitting three hunters versus Dracula creates a situation where the game can be set up to make the vampire player extremely powerful in comparison to the hunters without affecting balance, since the power differential can be corrected through the hunters ganging up. The power balance is further tilted by the hunters being in receipt of very little information about the state of the game in comparison with the virtually omniscient vampire. This creates a situation in which the Dracula player really ends up feeling like an immortal monster weaving Byzantine plots across Europe while the hunters play most of the game in a state of genuine fear and doubt - all while retaining a reasonably balanced game. The second element are the excellent components of the game which really evoke the late-Victorian setting of the fateful chase depicted in the novel.

Hopefully by now getting away from the obvious candidates my third pick is Space Hulk. I think that WW2 games attempting to be thematic could learn a lot from this, which manages to be a squad tactics game that derives a genuine sense of urgency from the simple expedient of placing a timer on the marine players' move. Doing this injects an exciting element of panic into what is otherwise quite a thoughtful and tactical game. The use of differing hidden information on both sides is also an important component in creating a claustrophobic atmosphere - the marine player can never know the precise number of the foe he's dealing with and the genestealer player has to contend with the hidden action points of the marines. And again the fantastic GW components also help.

My final pick, is Bootleggers from Eagle Games. While this looks like (and is) a somewhat garish mishmash of Euro mechanics shoehorned into an Ameritrash game the tie between mechanics and theme is actually very strong. In particular the area majority mechanic used to govern control of speakeasies seems incredibly reminiscent of the way mob bosses would have to use muscle in order to maintain presence in the marketplace. The rules around stills and whiskey production, while random, actually use the randomness to evoke the trial-and-error process of illegal spirit production and the greater chance of attracting law enforcement to stills that produce larger amounts. The crowning glory of the theme in this game though is the brutal free-for-all nature of trading and debate which rewards loud threats as much, if not more, than careful wheeler-dealing and at the same time has a built-in real-life policing mechanism to stop it getting out of hand: renege on too many deals and no-one will trust you any more. Playing this I always feel like I should be breaking out the trilby hats and the fat cigars.

So what can we derive from all this? Well, obviously the games above all differ in the way that they go about creating a thematic experience but nevertheless, I think we can use them to draw up a five-point list (in no particular order) for building thematic boardgames:

1) Hidden information is a great way of representing a number of different themes.

2) Don't be afraid of setting up asymmetrical games with flavour rules for different sides that help to set the scene.

3) Try and include some open mechanics (i.e. negotiation) which mirror real-life situations and come with similar advantages and disadvantages.

4) Implement your choice of the above rules without too much regard for game balance - it's important, but the theme comes first.

5) Provide good quality components that are designed to evoke the setting of the game.

Right, armed with this I'm off to design FFG's next bestseller. See you next year.