I get it, you love your board game. And you need it to contain everything for you. But, not everyone needs everything. And not every board game needs everything added to it just to meet the needs of some people. So let’s look at some things that are often asked for, or often added to, a board game that, well, maybe shouldn’t be, or in what cases they should be.

Not Every Board Game Needs A…

Campaign Mode

Let’s start off with an easy one. Not every board game needs a campaign mode. And I do think that this is the one where most often it works out fine. Why, because games with campaign modes generally were given a campaign mode at the start of the process. It wasn’t tacked on later. But that’s going to be what I say needs to be done when thinking about a campaign mode, did you plan one from the beginning?

Minis

Let’s tackle another similar one. Does your game need minis?

Again, probably not. I get it that there are a bunch of people out there whose hobby is to buy board games and paint minis. Mine is to buy board games, dream about painting minis, and then play the board games. Not that most painters don’t play them, but there are those who painting is their hobby.

But not every game needs minis. You, the publisher, just need to make sure that you handle it well. A poorly cut cardboard standee doesn’t cut it. Acrylic standees, those are great, full art, see through so block less of the board, and they look cool. And because they are full art, I don’t need to paint them. Or screen printed meeples, also awesome. It’s about getting away from the grey plastic, but not phoning it in.

Solo Mode

I love a good solo mode. I play lots of games solo. You watch them over on Malts and Meeples YouTube. But not every game needs a solo mode. Does the game make sense to have one?

Let’s start by looking at cooperative games. That basically always needs a solo mode. But, really, it already has a two handed solo mode baked into the game. So even if there isn’t an official one, most cooperative games, unless there is specific hidden information, are easy to be as solo games.

But with competitive games, how much does it make sense to have one? Sometimes the answer is a lot. Without much effort or fundamentally changing the game too much, it works. But if playing the solo mode becomes so much work that it feels like you’re playing another game completely, skip it. Don’t pretend you have a solo mode. If solo mode works great but it’s very different from the multiplayer, congrats you developed a solo game, not a solo mode.

Room for Sleeves

This is the first one where I generally don’t like them. I like a good solo mode, or campaign, or minis. But room for sleeves, that rarely, if every matters for me. And the games I sleeve, in fact, I got rid of the insert for those games because it doesn’t work with sleeves, and I don’t care.

I care more about when you put in so much room for cards that the cards can’t stand up straight. There is so much space that keeping everything sorted doesn’t work.

When I am on a Kickstarter or Gamefound, I see comments asking for rooms for sleeves. I see a lot of them, often from the same few people over and over again. Publishers, most people don’t care about sleeves. And maybe you do. Maybe you want to get room for sleeves in your box. But still plan for the majority of people who don’t sleeve.

Blocks of soft foam are great. You can use them to keep the cards from sliding around. And if someone wants to sleeve, they can sleeve. There is room for that, but for a non-sleever, like myself, I don’t need to hope my cards don’t slide around and shuffle themselves in the box because of how much room there is.

The Same Theme

There are two main areas that I think this shows up. A game having generic fantasy as the theme. Or, and possibly more common, trading goods in the Mediterranean. That is a boring theme, and fantasy done wrong is a boring theme as well. It’s just generic, both of these are just very bland and generic.

You want your game to stand out. And maybe you’re a great enough designer that you don’t need that. You can turn out generic beige euro after beige euro. But most people, that means a game gets lost in a shuffle.

So, be creative in a way that makes sense. There is of course a game that is trading in the Mediterranean with cats instead of people, not creative. But then you have games like Oathsworn, Tainted Grail, Roll Player Adventures, Gloomhaven, and Too Many Bones that create unique fantasy settings. It is possible, it requires more work, but don’t create boring settings and themes.

Different Modes

This might be the same as having a solo mode. Or it might be the same as having a campaign. But it’s more than that. Some games come with six different ways you can play them. Cooperative, competitive, solo, campaign, roll and write, etc. that is just silly.

But rarely, if ever, do I think you should give a game you put out a cooperative, semi cooperative, and competitive mode. Solo or campaign, we went over those, they make sense, at times.

But when I see those other three for a single game and a single campaign, my assumption is, one of them is solid. The other two are probably poor, and the best one isn’t as good as it could be. Too much time went into creating three games in one box, that the game it started as didn’t have time to fully bake.

So when do you do this? I think the answer is never. Now, maybe your game is the exception. But rarely does a game need all of those things. And rarely are all of them ready at the same time. So do what Dice Throne did. I own a ton of Dice Throne. If I wanted to play it cooperatively, they did a separate campaign for cooperative. Make it it’s own thing so that you truly focus on a single game at a time.

What Do You Think Not All Board Games Need?

I think there are more. There are a lot of things and some that I only alluded to. Like, not every game needs a roll and write version of it. Most of them aren’t great. But what do you think I missed, do you have any standouts?

And I find that none of these are hard and fast rules. It’s more about making sure you are on a track and focusing on what the game is actually about. Don’t bog it down because you want to keep up with the Joneses in terms of how board games are made.

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