Reflection on Board Games as Poetry
Added 2025-04-01 17:11:23 +0000 UTCOccasionally I've remarked that board games are similar to poetry in the way TTRPGs are similar to prose. I'm still not confident in this claim, and I don't think it's universally applicable. I would even say that most people's instincts go the other way, and would assume the opposite. But I want to lay out my claim here. Perhaps on my Medium I'll give some examples and do a whole proper article about it. For now, here's the claim without evidence.
When I say TTRPGs are like prose, what I mean to emphasize is that there is a fictional object at the core of it all, and the primary goal of my writing is to communicate this fictional object to you as the reader. A novel in prose seeks to convey its plot and characters and world to you, and a TTRPG similarly seeks to give you the tools you need to be present in its world. In both cases I may choose to be poetic, but if the poetry "gets in the way" of the fiction being presented, it is broadly considered to be a misstep.
When I say board games are like poetry, what I mean to emphasize is that the narrative (that "fictional thing") is completely subservient to the holistic experience of the object itself. A board game, much like a poem, presents an experience to you — which you may choose to relate to yourself, take issue with its framing, or just experience and allow to pass through you. A poem has no obligation to be clear, just as a board game has no obligation to make explicit the connection between narrative and play.
Historically, board games and poems were also both rigorously metered art objects, with strict verse-structures and models of correct vs. incorrect construction. There has been a century of artistic expression and elaboration around the nature of poems allowing them to break free from this confine. Board games have not had this same artistic revolution, and in fact have labored tremendously under the expectations of a capitalist market.
How would they be different if this wasn't the case?
Comments
yeah!!!! i think all extremely well put
Jay Dragon
2025-04-01 18:02:25 +0000 UTCKinda wild take that I actually somewhat agree with I think??? But there are TTRPGs that are extremely poem-like, and are fascinating objects to me, both in the way they play and read (I think about Dragonfly Motel and Inflorenza by Thomas Munier a lot. I played Dragonfly Motel once. The rules weren't exactly clear. I still have no idea what happened during that game. And yet it was a powerfully evocative, vivid experience!! Very "poetry as a TTRPG", both in form and in the resulting "performance/experience"; the game is poetry, and the results are poetry. I've never played Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine, and I'm not sure the game is necessarily good???? But the rules have seemed somewhat impenetrable to me when I read it, and yet they fascinated me to no end, which I think has a somewhat poetic quality to it. But the line between prose and poetry can get VERY blurry to me) But yes I think there is beauty in the way boardgames convey their meaning in indirect way, and in how they make the players participate in extracting meaning and story from their rigid structure and mechanics. Boardgames are more sweaty. TTRPGs can be campfire tales, you can half read the manual and get away with playing loosey goosey with the rules and still tell a wonderful story and have a great time. Some boardgames, when they try to offer a more structured experience, like when they're focused on strategy, suffer immensely if you get sometimes a single rule wrong (which can throw the entire balance of the game out the proverbial window); so, the "form"/rules/"meter" matters a lot more in that case, right? But it's a spectrum, cause some boardgames are more on the "social experience" side of that spectrum and require much less strict adherence to rules (like party games, some word games, "drawing games" like gartic phone where the rules???? who gives a shit); the same way some more boardgamey/wargamey TTRPGs can be ruined by balance issues or rule misinterpretations, right? Sorry I'm formulating these thoughts as I type, but it's like, I feel there's a spectrum of rigidity/structure/rules being core to the experience vs. almost getting in the way of the experience depending on the social mood of the table and the goal of the evening???? (Are we here to plan and do maths or are we here to chill and chatter??) And it's weird because... The more you're here to plan and maths the more obscured and distant the story gets, the more moving parts and structure you have, so like the fictional element gets blurred and more open to interpretation? But also the more you're here to chill, the more you can just focus on the story, but also the more you can... take liberties with the rules, and maybe change them as you go, so the more you can nuke the structure of the prose you're crafting and turn it into like... free verse weirdness poetry stuff? And the more the game has space to kind of become "just an experience"?? Hum sorry I don't know if any of this is very clear. I think to me, there's a few spectrums at work. "Adherence to rules/meter <-> freedom of form", "Explicit narration <-> Implicit narration", and "Strong story presence <-> Weak story presence"; so like, a poem can have a strong story presence with an explicit narration, and what makes it a poem is strong adherence to rules/meter (like there are entire books telling very explicitly their story); and you can have poems with no structure/meter, but the poetry comes from exploration of this freedom of form and a weaker story presence with a more implicit narration, right? And it's kind of the same for games, right? But I feel like poetry is also about a sort of tone or rawness or intent to create beauty or evoke something powerfully? Like, maybe "Storytelling focus <-> Experience/Emotion/Evocation focus" ? And you have boardgames with almost no story content and a lot of freedom of form and like, there's not really any narration, right? (I'm thinking about stuff like "Just One" or "So Clover" or "Gartic Phone") (But I think you can see those as a sort of poetry in the social aspect of them, how everyone brings a bit of their own expression and thoughts into the game, and the intended experience is kind of this collective dynamic and the being together and this connection so... I guess it does make them poem-like.) So yeah you have your wargamey TTRPGs and your strategy boardgames where I think you have the cursors shifted towards Implicit narration (because it's more that the maths is telling a story and the DM is somewhat trying to divine a story from it, right?), and Adherence to rules, and a weaker story presence, but for the TTRPG there's still a bit more of a storytelling focus, while the boardgame has more of an Experience focus where the experience is... strategy. (And sometimes feeling like you're CONQUERING THE GALAXY. Is Twilight Imperium one of boardgame's Epics (epic in like the poetic sense)) (((I think yes and I like that a lot))) (Anyways, poetry and prose can be so different and so blurry that pinning them down feels a bit difficult. But I think you're hitting upon something super interesting about how TTRPGs and boardgames can be similar and dissimilar, although I suspect, hope, and intend that we'll keep blurring the line between the two)
fae.exe
2025-04-01 18:01:03 +0000 UTCInteresting! There are examples of board games beginning to experience this artistic revolution. Haven't played it yet, but have watched a playthrough and if feels like Wilmot's Warehouse might be a good example of something that incorporates a particular view of it at a particular time as the only way to interact with it (no "right" version of the art without the experience of the art, and all experiences different). I had a minor word stumble, by the way, contrasting " to be present in its world" and "presents an experience to you". Maybe some other word instead of present in the first phrase, like immerse perhaps, would let the contrast show more clearly? It's tricky because they are similar, but I think I get what you're going for.
Dinah from Kabalor
2025-04-01 17:33:48 +0000 UTC
