Creating Resonance with Thematic Tabletop Game Design

In this 2021 Board Game Design Summit talk, Sarah Shipp shares what makes tabletop games resonate with players, and how their themes can be tweaked to be even more resonant.
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[@muzboz]

I went to check out Sarah's blog, and ended up reading and notating about 30 blog posts! So, a very fruitful visit. Thanks! :D

[@the_markoman]

A great talk about the need to identify and polish the core themes and mechanics. The one thing I'd disagree with is the point about avoiding gimmicks. While they're superflous to the core of a game, many memorable moments rely on including little distractions. They serve a function of breaking the flow of a game, to avoid monotony. The Deck of Many Things from DnD isn't necessary to the core game - exploring dungeons and slaying monsters - but it's the cause of many fun stories and disasters.

[@tomkirbygreen]

Wonderful talk, I’ll need to listen to this a couple of times at least. Will definitely check out your blog. Thank you ever so much for sharing.

[@drayerink]

Wow, I am not good at listening to long presentations, but this was really interesting and useful, thank you, Sarah - I really liked the definitions, and a lot of what you had to say gave me "of course" moments in relation to both my own designs and my experience as a theatre tech - all round, a very useful examination of theme from a game design perspective. Lots of things to think about here!

[@TheVeriOra]

Great talk

[@viocult]

I laughed out loud of the delivery of 44:20 "Now I am far from wanting Everdell to be more complicated.."
Great talk. Can't wait to find out if Shipp Board Games have some naval games.

[@drayerink]

Haha absolutely, lol, that was really entertaining. I, too, got the seasons wrong - the first thing I said when reading the rules was "that doesn't make sense" and then I got very lost trying to get things done in time. And knocking things off the Evertree, heh

[@foyoGames]

Broken Down to the very last Compound. Looks like Tokaido 2 (Namiji) sticks to it's Resonant roots 👍

[@thomasputko1080]

Im not into board game design so im not sure how well estaished these terms are and what they mean to other designers but it seems like the definitions given are not sharp at all. They are so broad they can mean anything and the whole vid turns into gibberish to me. Its not a critique, dont get me wrong. Its just me personaly, I cant make much sense out of it. This might be a great content for someone in the business. Please let me know how wrong I am.

[@jamieglitter]

To me, I interpreted the main talking points to be: don't tell - show. Game mechanics in games (video games or board games) can be your lore. That you don't need people to read text or watch cutscenes to let them know what's going on if your mechanics and visual designs are good enough. Excellent examples are Stray, Little Nightmares, or Portal. The second point was that personal experiences are more compelling than big "god-view" style experiences. For instance, a lot of people think that video game characters that are completely build-your-own like the original Dragon Age protagonist are not as good as a pre-defined characters like Hawke in Dragon Age 2. Just my thoughts though, I'm sure others could also interpret differently

[@aliens5142]

it seems like in this case, sarahs presentation lacked resonance(kidding) xD i was able to follow with most of her presentation/ideas with ease(rarely happens for most vids on gdc). what you "experienced" while watching her presentation is exactly what shes talking about lol
terminologies she used just didnt "resonate" xD with you but they werent wrong either. most of the ideas are applicable to game design in general

[@thomasputko1080]

@@aliens5142 perhaps you could translate from alien to human for me? 🙂