Board Games & Drama: The Stage Meets Strategy

What makes a good board game?

Is it an engaging theme? Absolutely. Vivid art? Agreed. Quality components? Sure. Innovative
gameplay? Yep.

More often than not, it’s a blend of some or all of these - an alchemical marriage of mechanics
and material to create something that just hooks us. Sometimes, a game soars despite apparent
deficiencies: the mishmash of art in Terraforming Mars is ignored because the engine building
beneath is so damn addictive and additive; in a world full of train games - not the most thrilling
subject matter, some would think - Ticket To Ride’s simplicity has led it to become a behemoth
and a gateway game for so many new players; Risk Legacy took our breath away by initiating a
whole new genre within the hobby in spite of the fact that it was still Risk, dammit!

And sometimes, it’s not clear why one game flies and another falls. We all have soft spots for
games that we know aren’t works of genius. So why do we cling to our pieces of Board Game
Geek-rated trash like this? I believe it’s because sometime, someplace, we forged a memory while
playing it.

When not playing games, I’m an actor and writer. As a result, I’m a big believer in the value of the
drama and the story when we play, both on the table and in the wider room. For a game to hook
me, it should provide moments of tension, excitement, highs and lows. And the way a game is
presented, how we set a tone and atmosphere as we play - the mise en scêne we create - is as
important as any other aspect. That’s what instils the feelings that we carry with us beyond that
playthrough. So let’s dive into the best way to produce a drama-filled games night!

A good play or film can live or die by its sound design. I’m sure I’m not the only one who likes to
curate a playlist when playing. It helps immerse your group in the world you’re exploring. I
mentioned Terraforming Mars - there’s no better way to undertake your mission transforming The
Red Planet than being underscored by Hans Zimmer and Clint Mansell’s orchestrations for the
films Interstellar and Moon respectively. Taking a pleasant walk through Japan from Kyoto to Edo
in Tokaido? Some traditional Hogaku music is the perfect accompaniment. Crafting a beautiful
tiled wall in Azul? Hum along to some Portuguese fado while you do. Whether you’re playing a
game set in a peaceful forest or on the raging seas, there are soundscapes and soundtracks
aplenty on YouTube and Spotify. Indeed, the brilliant Board Game Ambience channel on YouTube
is one of my go-tos, with numerous videos containing the perfect accompaniment for countless
games. But if you like things dramatic but silent, there’s Magic Maze where you play a gang of
rogues trying to quietly escape detection. Imagine a table all passive-aggressively eyeballing each
other, tapping the so-called “Do Something” totem in front of a confused teammate, willing them
to make the right move.

Lighting design can be equally important. In some games it is a built-in mechanic. Khet is a
game of chess where you try to align mirrored pieces to direct a laser at your opponent’s pieces.
In Shadows In The Dark, various “shadowling” player pieces try to evade the light of another
player’s lantern in a cardboard forest. The game wasn’t hugely successful: it’s hard to achieve
total darkness and, if you do, moving pieces without knocking over trees and so on can be pretty
impossible. However, the idea acknowledged the dramatic potential of lighting around the table
and it can be really engaging to narrow the focus of the lighting in your room to the table at which
you’re playing. This is especially true of 10 Candles, the one-shot RPG of creeping dread. If you
have never played it, go do it. Not only does the game have you sound design your epilogue -
players record their characters’ “final message” before the game and listen to them after their
inevitable deaths - but it is played in a darkened room lit only by the ten titular candles. A world
plunging into hopeless darkness is evoked as each of the game’s ten scenes is ended by a
tealight being extinguished - or dramatically guttering of its own accord.

(Spoiler alert for Charterstone, game 9 of 12: Stonemaier’s village-building legacy game divided
players when it came out in 2017. For me and my group, we enjoyed it and had one of the most
dramatic nights of our gaming lives specifically in game 9 of the campaign. This episode
introduces a small tealight, representing the king’s beacon which must be tended. If the candle
goes out on your turn, something bad happens to you. We instantly adopted more hushed tones
and played rapidly with an agreed upon house-rule that you had to say “Done” to mark when the
turn had passed to the next player. With that tension already established, imagine the mayhem
when one player then knocked over their glass of wine, pooling into an alcoholic ocean around
the beacon. The chaotic dance of players trying to mop up, continue taking turns and - careful
now - avoid creating a draught which would darken the beacon, all while STILL WHISPERING
FOR SOME REASON, spoke to a gaming experience which had stirred our feelings perfectly.)

Zooming in to the table, what about the set design? Every board and card and component are
the backdrops and props which you, the actors, will handle in performing your play. Wingspan’s
eggs and bird-house dice tower are a great examples of alluring visual presentation with a touch
of uniqueness pulling in an audience. It’s why the gangster bluffing game Cash And Guns grabs
attention even in a crowded pub, with those stick-em-up moments involving its foam firearms. It’s
why forest-based worker-placement franchise Everdell has become something of an expansion
machine, roots and branches sprawling ever further from its base game and its eye-catching
central tree. It’s why Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective gives a bit more than your average
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, with its in-world newspapers. And I defy anyone to convince me
that madcap Wild West caper Colt Express would be so popular if it relied on a tableau of flat
cards instead of a 3D cardboard train.

And sometimes games are just inherently dramatic: The reveal of the traitor is Betrayal At House
On The Hill sees the players split into separate rooms to read their tomes, an immediate fracturing
of the previously-established group trust. The pull of a cube from the bag in Clank!, which
determines if a dragon might damage your dungeon-crawling hero, feels somehow more camp,
more thematic and much more tense than a dice roll or turn of a card. An element of ceremony is
a big part of the drama: think of swapping - or not swapping - cards in Mascarade, peeking in the
cigar box in Mafia de Cuba, and shaking hands to say “Mission accomplished!” in Venetian spy
classic Inkognito. Most obvious of all, opening a new box to reveal SOMETHING in any legacy
game is the ceremony which explains their hold over so many gamers’ imaginations.
SOMETHING is hidden in that chest, behind that door, under that insert, and we all love solving a
mystery.

But it’s all about the narratives, in the end. We live or die by the screenplay and scripts. The
phenomenon that is Blood On The Clocktower has become a beloved social deduction game, not
least due to the stories it tells. It is a game built on lies, deceit, dramatic deaths and foiled plans
as good battles against evil. The Storyteller who runs the game sees all in a game box
transformed into an evocative grimoire. Hell, I own a cape and a gong which I use when running
the game and the last group of newcomers I introduced to it begged me to turn the actual lights
down in the room when it was night time, even though their eyes were closed, to add to the
atmosphere. With the right people, playing the game not just to win but to relish it, BOTC sings
because it is story upon story begging to be told. Similarly, Blades In The Dark, the RPG of ghosts
and scoundrels, has a D6 mechanic which drives narrative. Sometimes your D&D game can flag
as you get bogged down in numbers and modifiers and all that. In Blades, you only succeed on a
6, fail on a 3 or less and, most intriguingly of all, gain a success with a complication on a 4 or 5. In
a game which is often about heists, daring raids and underworld escapades, successes which
just bring new complications are catnip to a DM and evoke classic heist films like Ocean’s 11 and
The Italian Job. And if rolling dice isn’t your cup of RPG tea, just play Dread. Essentially - you
wanna do something difficult? Pull a block from a Jenga tower. Enough said.

But most important of all is the act of bringing together a group of players in the first place.
Gather your friends and do battle with one another across time and space, or work in cooperation
to eliminate a pandemic. Visit distant lands and see new worlds or take on a new job and make
the mundane seem heroic. Make each other laugh or cause your friends to melodramatically
curse you and your ancestors with that last-minute victory. Every game night is a story waiting to
be told by these people in this room. The stories that get those 5 star reviews are the ones where
your design, your props, your costume (seriously guys, get a games night cape!) and your actors
blend perfectly. If you want to make them extra memorable, look for the drama - it’ll be worth it
when they’re calling out encore at the end.