First, a shout out to Halloween games.

If you’re in the Halloween gaming mood, here’s some tabletop games to check out:

• Mall of Horror
• Arkham Horror
• Betrayal at House on the Hill (and if you see it around, it’ll probably be out of print soon, so might not be a bad idea to snap it up).
• Call of Cthulhu RPG and/or CCG
• Horrorclix
• Any suitably creepy RPG adventure. I’m running one myself in d20 Modern this Saturday.

Now that you’re prepared for the week ahead, here’s something that has nothing to do with Halloween: the Triangle.

The Triangle is a representation of three different ways that one can approach designing a new boardgame.

-Start with a Theme. This is popular among “American style” games, and up until recently, has represented the majority of designs. Start with what you want your game to be about. There are many examples of this: Munchkin, Chez Geek, The Game of Life, Reiner Knizia’s Lord of the Rings (according to an essay he wrote in Rules of Play), and many many more.
This, unfortunately, tends to lead to worse games, but it doesn’t have to. Theme is a whole ball of wax that will probably take several columns to delve into. For now, game designer Kory Heath has his notes online about theme from a lecture he gave at a game design convention, and since he taught me nearly everything I know about game design, I’ll refer you there for now.

But to sum up: if you sit down and say “I’m going to design a game about Zombie Mexicans trying to cross the border into the US and the players play the fence trying to keep them out” you’re designing from a theme.

-Start with mechanics. This is most common in “Euro-style” games. Start with how your game plays. Examples are Kingdoms, Puerto Rico, and Werewolf. A good indicator of this is when a game has been published and its theme has been changed since the original prototype or has even been republished with a different theme.
Common complaints about this style are that the end result feels “dry”, that it is difficult to get into the game, or that theme ends up being “slapped on.” This last one tends to be when someone buys a game because they like games about Egypt or Pirates but then finds it’s a bidding game that doesn’t remind them of Egypt at all or that it ends up being a crazy, strategic Candyland variant instead of sailing the high seas for buried treasure.

-Start with components. Start your game with what you want your players to play with. Examples are Twister, Loopin’ Louie, King Arthur, and Jenga. Electronic games (the ones that didn’t begin life as another kind of game) are common here, as are dexterity games. But it doesn’t have to be: maybe you really want to design a game with two dice numbered 1, 3, 50, 54, 77, and 1000. Maybe you were given a Shark and 6 colored pawns as presents and want to turn them into a game. And lots of people have taken their Legos and turned them into game pieces.

Common complaints with this style are the games being too gimmicky, or too exhausting. (Or painful!) You may think a game played with an electro-shocking device is great, but not everyone will agree with you. Of course, you may also want to design a game with fairly unwieldy components. You can always take a theme and slap some mechanics onto it, and vice versa, but you can’t always make a game from components. Sometimes you’re just going to have to accept that the Tesla Coil does not make a good randomizing element.

While many games start out coming from only one of these directions, there are plenty that start somewhere else inside the triangle. You will need address all three ends of the triangle to have a finished game after all.

As always, good luck in the creative process. And always be on the look-out for good themes, mechanics, and components!