Major Developments in the Evolution of Tabletop Game Design Frederick Reiber Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences University of California Irvine Irvine, USA [email protected] Abstract—Tabletop game design is very much an incremental these same concepts can and have been used in video game art. Designers build upon the ideas of previous games, often design. improving and combining already defined game mechanics. In Although some of these breakthroughs might be already this work, we look at a collection of the most impactful tabletop game designs, or games that have caused a significant shift in known by long time game designers, it is important to formally the tabletop game design space. This work seeks to record those document these developments. By doing so, we can not only shifts, and does so with the aid of empirical analysis. For each bridge the gap between experienced and novice game design- game, a brief description of the game’s history and mechanics ers, but we can also begin to facilitate scholarly discussion on is given, followed by a discussion on its impact within tabletop the evolution of games. Furthermore, this research is of interest game design. to those within the tabletop game industry as it provides Index Terms—Game Design, Mechanics, Impact. analysis on major developments in the field. It is also our belief that this work can be useful to academics, specifically I. INTRODUCTION those in the fields of game design, game analytics, and game There are many elements that go into creating a successful generation AI. tabletop game. These can include the components, rulebooks, In this paper, we present eight games that have caused and art. One of the most important, are the rules that players major developments within tabletop game design. They are use to interact with the game and each other. Tabletop game presented in the following and chronological order: Tactics, rules are often broken up into mechanics, or systems of Diplomacy, Cosmic Encounter, Magic: The Gathering, Catan, rules that govern certain game elements [1]. Designers rarely Dominion, Pandemic, and Pandemic Legacy, Season 1. For come up with new mechanics, causing many tabletop games each of these games an overview of the game is given, to share mechanics. Instead, designers will combine already detailing important mechanics and design elements followed established mechanics or tweak mechanics to create a better by a discussion of their effect. It should be noted that this work play experience. focuses on the American school of design, not the European This way of designing games is commonplace in the style. A discussion of European design can be found in [4]. tabletop games industry. Despite having over 125,000 unique For most games empirical evidence on their impact is given. games, BoardGameGeek [2] only lists a total of 183 It is important to note that this work does not list all games unique game mechanics. The current highest rated game on that caused a major shift in the tabletop game design space, BoardGameGeek, Gloomhaven [3], is listed as having a total and that may be an area for future work. of 20 unique mechanics, none of which originated with the II. BACKGROUND game. The same can be said for almost all popular modern A. Definitions tabletop games. However, this is not true for all games. Throughout the There are numerous works that attempt to define what life of the tabletop games industry, a small subset of games constitutes a tabletop game. Doing so has proven to be have caused the tabletop games industry to shift dramatically, difficult, and the exact definition of general game is somewhat either through the development of new game mechanics or debated [5]–[7]. For our purposes we will use the following the rapid popularization of an already developed mechanic. rule, if a product has a BoardGameGeek page, we will consider Looking at and understanding these games is critical for it a tabletop game. This assumption is almost required as tabletop game design as a whole, as many present ideas that attempting to define tabletop games could be a work on its are the foundation of tabletop game design. As such, this work own. Additionally, this greatly eases empirical analysis, as is highly beneficial to tabletop game designers. This work also BoardGameGeek is the main sources of data. The full page on has relevance for game designers in other spheres, as many of what BoardGameGeek considers a tabletop game is available at [8]. Generally, all games considered tabletop games are included, with the main exception being Role Playing Games 978-1-6654-3886-5/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE as they lack a predetermined quantifiable outcomes [9]. When it comes to defining a game mechanics, there is no very popular in the commercial tabletop game market. For a widely accepted definition [10]. A commonly used definition game that, while being popular, does not constitute a major is that “A game’s mechanics are the rules and procedures development look at Monopoly. Monopoly’s major mechanic that guide the player and the game response to the player’s is roll/spin and move, a mechanic that is not highly used in moves or actions” [11]. Attempting to define game mechanics modern tabletop game [16]. As such, it does not constitute a is beyond the scope of this paper, and to ease analysis we major development. will be using the game mechanics defined in Geoff Engelstein III. GAMES and Isaac Shalev’s book Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms [12]. The book is A. Tactics an encyclopedia of around 200 mechanics, and is also the Tactics [15] is a tabletop war game, designed by Charles basis for BoardGameGeek’s mechanic list [13]. Although the S. Roberts in 1953, first published in 1954 [17]. By today’s book does not provide formal definitions on a mechanic, it measurement, Tactics is a relatively simple game. It features does formalise the definitions of many mechanics. As such, nameless countries with generic post World War II armies all mechanics discussed will be taken from this work. clashing. That is not to say that the game did not feature innovative mechanics, it very much did and they will be B. BoardGameGeek discussed later, but unlike other games discussed in this work Before beginning our discussion on tabletop game evolution, Tactics is not widely played today. However, the effects of it is important to discuss BoardGameGeek as a source, as it cannot be understated, as it set the foundation for all of most of the quantitative data used in the rest of the work is modern tabletop gaming. drawn from it. BoardGameGeek is an online website used by Tactics is important for two main reasons. The first is that board game hobbyists to rate, discuss and trade board games. it created a market for commercial wargames. Wargaming BoardGameGeek also has a database of over 125,000 games, has a deep history, dating back to Prussian military in the making it the largest tabletop game database at time of writing. 18th century. At that time, wargames were mainly used as a For this reason, almost all quantitative data will be pulled from teaching tool for future officers, with a very small group of BoardGameGeek’s database. hobbyists [18]. Discussing the history of non-commercial war There are shortcomings of the BoardGameGeek database, gaming is beyond the scope of this work, although a number mainly that it is community run. BoardGameGeek has admin- of works exist on this [18]–[20]. Before Tactic’s release, no istrators that monitor and check all submissions, However, that market for adult games existed. On a whim, Roberts decided does not mean the database is infallible. In a recent study, to sell his design, ultimately selling around 2,000 copies [21]. researchers found that the accuracy of drug information on This eventually led him to found Avalon Hill, one of the Wikipedia, another community run database, was 99.7%±0.2% most successful board game publishers up until its selling to when compared to textbook data [14]. The same study also Hasbro in 1998 [22]. During this time Avalon Hill published a found that Wikipedia has a significantly lower completeness multitude of wargames that built upon the ideas of Tactics and on drug information, 83.8±1.5% [14]. If there is any error started the tabletop games hobby and industry. Because of this, within the BoardGameGeek database, it is also likely to be in Tactics is generally cited as the beginning of the commercial its completeness, mainly when dealing with extremely niche war game market and is directly responsible for popularizing game products. The most likely effect is that when citing the war game mechanics. As commercial wargames can be argued number of published games in a certain scope, that number as the starting point for all of modern tabletop game design may be lower than the actual. However, if the game does not Tactics is also often cited as the beginning of the adult tabletop exist within BoardGameGeek’s database it is likely of little game industry [23]. consequence to the industry as a whole. Many other important games draw inspiration from wargames, specifically American games, some of which will C. Methodology be touched on later. However, since we have ruled out tabletop The final background point to discuss is the following role playing games from our definition, it should be noted question, what constitutes a major development in tabletop that role playing games, Dungeons and Dragons specifically, game design? In this work, we have tried to identify and are rooted in the wargaming tradition.