Designer Notes ItM #8 - Power Arcs in Board Games

Board game players "want to feel rich, they want to feel powerful, and the want to feel clever." -Gabe Barett, Board Game Design Lab

I remember the first time I ever played Terraforming Mars. My friend picked up the game at Essen 2016 and we played in a group of five at our favorite bar. I was blown away by my first experience of the game and had the feeling of wanting to play another game after. There are several things Terraforming Mars does very well as a board game. When I spoke with a different friend a week later I said the game had a great "power arc." This is what impressed me the most. In the early game you can only perform a handful of actions, but by the end of the game your engines are online and you're making decisions and actions left and right. This is what I'm talking about with the power arc and it's critical to understand what kind of power arc you have in the design, why you have a certain power arc and how you can control it.

First off, there are different power arcs out there. You can have a linear power arc, where the amount of things to do increases steadily throughout the game; think of games like Stone Age or Lords of Waterdeep. There's an exponential power arc where the number of options and actions explode; examples here are Gaia Project, Terraforming Mars, or Wingspan. There are games with a flat power arc; Azul comes to mind, Chess is technically flat, but has a hidden arc because options increase due to pieces freeing up. Finally there are fluctuating power arcs; I would argue that Magic: The Gathering has a fluctuating arc because there are times when everything blows up and slows down. Uno is another good example of a fluctuating arc. Theoretically, a game could have a negative arc where the options decrease as the game progresses, but this breaks the cardinal rule of board games: it's not fun.

Even deeper I see a very fine line between linear and exponential power arcs. You could design a game with a "true" linear power arc where your number of actions increases once per round or options steady unlock. I find games that dance between linear and exponential far more interesting to play/design. An incredibly important concept here is TENSION. There needs to be aspects counteracting and pulling against each other. Just like in movies or books there is ALWAYS some kind of conflict because it engages the viewer, board games need tension or it's not engaging. This is why point salad games work so very well. You feel the tension between engine-building (or resource maximizing) and gaining victory points. It's also important that players feel a point where they must switch from maximizing their economy to maximizing their victory points.

Because of the importance of the power arc, it's a big deal that players have a limited amount of power in the early game so that it has room to grow. While working on my first game, Into the Mountain, I constantly receive feedback from players that they enjoy the feeling of growing in power, unlocking new things, and progressing. So pay attention that the early resources, options, and actions are small at the start. Remember that you also want to be able to hook players in the early game too, so they enjoy continuing to play and want to play another game.

While the player's power should be growing, it's also important to not let the game experience go too long. In other words, when the game ends and the players feel they could do so much more, but didn't fully get the chance, that's a good thing for the design. First, players appreciate the feeling of power they had in the game. Second, it makes them want to play again. Finally, it maintains that important concept of tension.

How do you influence the game's power arc? This truly is dependent on the mechanics in your game. If you have a worker placement game: think about the starting number of workers and how and when players receive more. You can adjust the power levels of locations, introduce additional costs to certain locations, allow player to unlock new locations. If you have a card game: vary the number of starting cards, make different ways players get new cards, limit and increase the number of cards that can be played. If it has area control: manipulate the rewards for area control, introduce partial control or progression rewards, allow changing ownership. Understand the action economy of your game. Some games use cubes to show how many actions you can take (like Through the Ages). It's very important the players are able to have ways to increase the number of actions they can take. If you feel that your game is experiencing a stale power arc, consider increasing the random elements or increasing the initial power level a bit.

Thanks very much for reading my blog. I haven't written one in a very long time and it means a lot to me to share my experience in board game design. Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter for Into the Mountain, follow me on Instagram, or join my Facebook group. I've got a list of further ideas and I'm looking forward to diving deep into the theory.

-Kevin Brunner