A couple of weeks ago, my game group and I had the opportunity to play a couple of unpublished prototypes. One of the games, which I can unfortunately only provide the scantest of details about, completely blew my mind even though it was mechanically very sloppy, unoriginal, and practically unpublishable in its current state. Yet the crude components, board artwork, and concept of this particular game- not to mention what we were actually doing in it- all indicated a theme that I have never seen executed in a board game before and it felt completely refreshing and out-of-the-blue in a way that many games currently in publication just can not approach.

Playing this game- I almost hesitate to call it that because it was more like playing around with someone’s rough sketch- brought me to the realization that the games that really interest me and make me feel a renewed vigor for the hobby are the ones in which I get to do something new. When I looked at that board and thought “wow, I can’t believe we’re going to do this in a board game”, there was a real sense of excitement and almost a sense of crossing into a new frontier, even though the subject matter is well trod in other mediums. I just can’t believe that to date no board game designer has taken on this game’s particular concept. It’s really a shame because it is a theme that would have broad appeal and could easily cross over into more mainstream gaming circles.

I’ve written a lot about theme here at Cracked LCD because I believe that the subject matter of the games we play is of paramount significance; don’t let anybody tell you anything different. I’ll take a crudely designed prototype that has a story to tell and an original concept over the most meticulously balanced and playtested game about building a medieval castle or growing crops. Playing this particular game also prompted me to realize how exhausted I am with the themes that are most common in board gaming. I’m burned out on the same fantasy adventure games played out in different costumes, with the same territorial control games, and with the standard resource management and economic models that form the mechanical basis for countless games. In sum, I’m kind of tired of what most games are about.

I want new themes. I want games to take me to new places and that let me do new things. I want to feel like the game I’m playing is going to offer me an experience that I can’t get in another one. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently, it is. Most designers are content to produce games that are about the same tired genre concepts or worn-out historical source material. We are at least lucky enough to have a few games like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, a game that really isn’t about spaceships and robots at all. It’s about how humans treat each other, tough moral decisions, and deep-seated suspicions about “the other”. And we have games like those published by Sierra Madre Games that tackle subjects such as the progress of human cognition and migratory patterns in ORIGINS: HOW WE BECAME HUMAN and geological change in the recently released EROSION. Some war games approach subject matter that has never been seen in games before, such as TWILIGHT STRUGGLE’s depiction of Cold War-era politics and social ideas. It isn’t hard to play a game like INDUSTRIAL WASTE and see that it’s actually about environmental issues and corporate responsibility.

Games like these that are about fresh ideas and new gaming concepts, with unique viewpoints and deeper approaches to theme, are few and far between. Instead, we get more pirate games. More games about fantasy heroes. More games about impressing authority figures in exotic lands. Renaissance crap. Various empires of antiquity. More games about transportation. More games about horrendously overanalyzed and over-gamed World War II battles. Army man A fights army man B throughout history, resources of one kind are exchanged for resources of another, and countless goblins fall leaving behind +1 swords or a couple of gold coins. These themes sell, but they sure are tired.

Over the past couple of years I’ve practically gutted my game collection down to a tight core of only the best and most fun examples of genre, theme, and mechanics in part due to this lack of progressive ideas in terms of subject matter and a growing sense of homogeneity. I may own five other fantasy adventure games, but I see little value in a redundant game like RUNEBOUND that has a completely generic fantasy setting and offers practically zero innovation other than layering tons of mechanics on top of a routine fantasy adventure game chassis in a laughable attempt to make the game “deeper”.

If I want to play a game about World War II, do I really need anything beyond CONFLICT OF HEROES? I can’t see the point in owning five or six games all about building railroads; I could care less if one of them has a slightly different mechanic for laying track. But then, something like TRAIN RAIDER lets me explore that theme in a wholly new way and offers a really different approach to the rail game theme. That’s the one that matters, then. Not any number of AGE OF STEAM variants.