Themes in Games

Michael Barnes wrote: Farrell is still the man, that guy is by far one of the best commentators about board games there's ever been.

Trashdome: Farrell vs Pulsipher

charlest wrote:

Gregarius wrote:

VonTush wrote:

Gregarius wrote: VonTush claimed that games cannot have a theme, like books or movies, because they are dynamic rather than static. I disagree. The rules are static. They may not produce exactly the same situation every game, but they have the same potential every time.

So, you're saying that the author is the source of the theme - Based on potential.
When means the question that charlest asks would have to be no that there wouldn't be theme unless the author intended it. Correct?

Actually, I was saying that the rules were the source of the theme. That's not the same as the author. I believe it is entirely possible that an author could be trying to make a game about the benefits of capitalism, but end up with a game about the corrupting influence of greed.

So, no, author intent is not the sole source of theme.

So if the theme could have been slapped on later or even be completely accidental without the designer/publisher realizing it...how is theme in this sense useful to us? What do we do with that? Isn't it meaningless? Is a message worth deciphering and studying if it could have been scrawled randomly?

no, no, no Charles

you're talking about the theme that's a level up from what Michael is trying to say, i.e. more like "setting". If you'd "rethemed" Tigris in a business world because, let's say the mechanics not only represent something fundamental in how civilisations rise, clash, split, merge, but that also applies to an area involving startup businesses or commercial idea, with companies rising, buying each other out, going bust, etc etc. Just because a designer might have got to the "core" of that but it's so fundamental that it applies to different "settings" shouldn't be seen as a negative.

The theme of Tigris is powerful because the mechanics derive from the theme, and it works in the setting it's in, but if it could be set in a corporate world, it wouldn't detract from the mechanics and theme if the theme fits another setting. It drives me mad when people just throw out "if you can paste any old theme on a game that shows the theme sucks and isn't useful". Actually it might just be that the underlying theme is more broad and whats actually "interchangeable" is a setting to fit on top of that. Whether some people enjoy specific settings and can base a dramatic narrative only from one of those is another question, and very subjective. But that doesnt mean that there cant be more than one "setting" (which is the word I'm using for what you say theme here) that "fits" a specific thematic trope (which is what Michael was trying to say). And as an aside, there's always the use of the theme to "hang together" the mechanics so that rules are less like pages of instructions to memorize and more like intuitive clues based on how you would think it "should" work.

also if we're talking about "The ME" in games, well, The Manhattan Project has a bomb card "The Swede" which is named after my wife, you'll also find me on Yellow #44 car in Thunder Alley, also in Agricola in the Pi deck the "Fertility Shrine" is me, the wife and our first kid, I also developed some of the ideas which later became the Carson City expansion, and later edited the rulebook. I also invented (and received a short ban hammer for) the BGG Cock Size.