Board games can offer a wide range of experiences. It is one of their strengths. But once you’ve tried out enough different board games, you’ll find that this range of experience can also be a hurdle. Because board games are participatory, not just interactive. How we take part in a game, is an important part of how we experience it. If we focus solely on how to apply the rules in the most efficient way, there’s little room for a theme to emerge. If we play while barely speaking a word or otherwise expressing how we feel, a game will feel more like a solitary puzzle than a memorable experience. If we avoid confrontations in a design that is geared towards conflict, we rob the game of its momentum. Similarly, a conflict-driven game can be cause for disappointment and frustration, if we can’t prepare for it ahead of time.

These difference between what a game offers and how we make use of it, doesn’t just colour our first impressions. It might even leave us with the wrong idea about a game’s strengths or weaknesses. Worse even, we might come away from the table thinking that this game or even this hobby is not the right fit for us.

Matching expectations to reality is a question of communication. At its core we’re trying to outline the emotional space a game offers. But since we often lack the words and concepts for it – there isn’t enough poetry about board games yet – we look to player behaviour or playstyles. In other words: we need to get across how a game is supposed to be played.

We often start by asking how much effort players are expected to put into the game, in order to play it properly. How much work does it take until we’re confident in how the rules work and we are able to grasp the game’s state during play? How long does it take until our decisions are driven by strategic purpose and not borne out of cluelessness. This isn’t about being able to turn any situation to your advantage. To understand a game means to be able to evaluate the game state, other players’ actions and our own options. So far, we’ve addressed these questions by sorting games into family games, hobby games or expert games.

It’s enough to quickly gauge a game’s learning curve. But it’s difficult to talk about a game’s intensity this way. Is every family game relaxing and non-confrontational? Is a hobby game always about an intense struggle over victory? Should we expect all expert games to focus on calculating and optimizing processes? Not to mention that this doesn’t even touch on the roles players will inhabit towards each other, or the ways in which they can contribute to having a great experience.

The German language podcast Spielend Subversiv primarily talks about Live Action Role Playing (LARPs). Here these questions are far more central than they are in board games. Because here all participants must know and understand what kind of play they’re committing themselves to. Since LARPs are far more concerned with the emotional impact and the experience of play, these questions draw more attention to themselves. In episode four of the podcast, the idea of a design document is mentioned. It’s a written account of what the game’s goals and focus is. While this document can also address safety questions (e.g. how to deal with a situation a player finds overwhelming for one reason or another), it also spells out the game’s priorities for play. Is this game about advancing and experiencing a plot, or does the plot serve merely as a stage for conflicts between characters? Is personal in-character experience and immersing yourself in the game’s world a high priority? And so on. Whatever the answers given in such a design document are, it serves as the foundation for play. So players who don’t bother to read and understand it, tend to be the cause of some annoyance.

I don’t think that board games need the equivalent of such a design document. Primarily because emotions and the shared experience of play doesn’t quite have the same importance as it does in LARPs. But the biggest enemy of every good game is the assumption that there is an unspoken agreement of how to play games. “Just play it” is the casual greeting of people, who are only surrounded by others who think just like them. Or who can rely on their fellow players’ social skills to adjust their playstyles to make the game fun.

And yet, board games do need players to know what kind of experience they’re getting into and what kind of behaviour is expected of them. Instead of relying on implications made by a game’s theme or genre, we might have to take the unusual step of talking about these things. Because the question of how to play game right, can’t be fully answered with just the game’s mechanisms.