The Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: A Review

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design for the most part does exactly what it sets out to: provide an encyclopedia of commonly recognized gaming mechanisms, and give examples of their implementation and design challenges surrounding them. The primary audience, it seems, is game designers, and a lot of the commentary in the book is aimed at this audience.

I know less of author Isaac Shalev, but Geoffrey Engelstein is a known figure in design circles. He’s a designer, but is probably better known as a writer of game philosophy and as an advocate for designers in the industry. I’m a member of the Tabletop Game Designers Association, for example, and as I write this, Engelstein is the group’s president. I recommend any aspiring or established game designers check them out.

I also heartily recommend another of his books, Gametek. I’ve written about it previously, and have a link to my review of it near the bottom of this article.

But back to the book at hand. It’s an ambitious project, and also likely a thankless one at times. Any reader who rigorously researches games and their genres or mechanisms is going to have nits to pick with their treatment of the sphere of game design and game mechanisms. I’m going to add some to the pile below, for instance. The criticisms are with this perspective in mind, though, and both an appreciation and gratefulness of the endeavor of creating this book.

So the whole of the thing should be applauded, a point I want to emphasize before discussing what I’d change or attempt to improve. The authors have done a great job canvassing the industry, while also being humble enough to state outright that the list is not comprehensive and likely never could be. It’s a reference manual and guide, though, and in that capacity is well done and will be very useful to some.

Conversely, its high cost and breadth-over-depth focus will mean it will struggle to justify itself for some.

Why are both of these things true? Let’s get into it.

Audience Considerations

My main fear going in was that the audience this is ostensibly for – board game designers entrenched in hobby spaces – already knows most of this terminology and accompanying concepts. I paid…we’ll call it “a lot” for this book, which came recommended from a host of design-focused sources. You will likely pay quite a bit too, should you track it down. Did I waste that money on information I already know?

I found my fears to be partially, but not fully, realized.

I found myself glossing over certain sections and points, able to mentally quadruple the examples of mechanisms and their strengths and design challenges. There was nothing new for me here, nor more than a few pages of discussion breaking down any single mechanical concept.

The breadth of the book is its strength, though. New examples for obscure mechanisms, or particular insights from the authors on the relationship between different styles and approaches, can indeed help frame one’s thoughts during a design process. This is true regardless of your background.

While cost isn’t something I usually discuss in my reviews, this book isn’t cheap! And I don’t think it’s due to scarcity but simply a high MSRP. For what I paid (between $80-$90 US), it struggled to justify itself for me. Perhaps it will in time. But for someone who’s a newer entrant into the hobby, one who’s played perhaps dozens of games instead of hundreds or thousands, or has mostly played games published in the last 10 years, there’s a ton to gain here. I’d heartily recommend it in this scenario.

Meanwhile, I’ve played over 1,000 games in my lifetime from basically every known era of gaming, I run this blog where I discuss gaming, am online daily discussing games with similarly invested gamers, and have been designing and researching games for several years even outside those I’ve played.

Everyone needs to start somewhere, so I don’t say this to puff myself up. But I consider it uncontroversial to suggest that this book will deliver more value for some than others depending on where they fall on this experiential spectrum.

Game Terminology: Tricky Stuff

For the most part, they do a great job breaking down mechanisms and approaches to certain aspects of tabletop games, such as win conditions and turn order.

Additionally, they do a nice job explaining when there is overlap or fuzzy ground between mechanisms.

Not everything is perfectly separated in the book, though, despite their obvious rigor in many areas. Occasionally they seem to conflate ideas in ways that don’t sufficiently draw distinctions between unrelated concepts.

For an example of this, one need not leave the first section of the book, on game structures. Under semi-cooperative games, they list a couple games that have shared incentives during play, but never something akin to a shared end goal or collective loss condition.

The authors even call this out and say that the games don’t conform to their definition of semi-cooperative games. Which is the correct thing to do. Yet they still include these games in a section-ending list of representative games of the mechanism.

This seems deliberately confusing. At best, they’re asking readers to mentally separate what they’ve lumped together. Worst case, they’ve failed to delineate between two different mechanistic concepts, instead conflating the two closely enough that it will hinder recognition of both among their readers. Conflating shared incentives with semi-cooperative games, even via adjacency, is to misunderstand a lot of preferences that inform interest in either category of game.

This is not the only example of this, though it’s perhaps the most egregious I found. For another, a Traitor Game that they proclaim doesn’t match their definition of the mechanism also lines the representative games for that section. This is less onerous since it’s a game that more clearly informs the design considerations surrounding traitor games, but it still seems an odd inclusion in the section’s representative list, when so many others could have been selected.

For another, they list For Sale as a sample game in a mechanism where, just a few paragraphs earlier, they explicitly state that it belongs in another sub-type of auctions. It’s fine to discuss adjacent mechanisms and games to inform the context of the mechanism being discussed, but quite another to then lump them together as sample games highlighting the mechanism. Mildly baffling, and I assume these slipped through editing because they were simply listing all the games referenced in each mechanism section.

For yet another, both Intrigue and Can’t Stop are cited in the section for deckbuilding, and both seem bizarre inclusions. If I strain my credulity I can maybe see what they’re going for, but each is only given a single sentence of mention, and so I can only guess at the tenuous link that makes these deckbuilders. For reference, they aren’t deckbuilders by any colloquial definition of the term I’ve encountered in game discussion, so a single sentence is woefully inadequate for me to understand their intent, much less someone newer to hobby discourse. At minimum, significantly more is needed here to build out their thesis.

The only other I caught that seemed worth mentioning was lumping cube towers in with dexterity mechanics like stacking or flicking (under the “Physical Action” mechanism). I could maybe be convinced depending on its usage, but I’ve only ever clocked this as an action selection component, not a dexterity/skill-based element like flicking or stacking.

These issues aren’t the norm; rather, they’re a small handful drawn from hundreds of mechanism entries. So I have zero issues most of the time in this regard, but also couldn’t leave a few areas without comment.

The Biases of Modern Discourse

There are certain points I’d only expect a board gamer to make about games if they are steeped in online discussion or are working in a particular subset of the hobby gaming industry that designs and markets games primarily toward members of these communities. Reddit, Board Game Geek, Facebook, and a handful of other hotspots dominate this sphere.

A particular groupthink can develop in these bubbles, though, that anyone outside of them will be oblivious to and unaffected by. It’s abundantly clear that the authors are card-carrying members of these bubbles, though.

Which is no sin. So am I, for reference. Additionally, their audience is squarely centered in this same world, so some of this type of commentary is to be welcomed. And while it would be naive to expect the authors to remove their personal predilections from their commentary on mechanisms (indeed, this is what gives the book some necessary flavor at times), to my eye some biases in their commentary lead them to conclusions informed by this groupthink, which I don’t always believe speaks for the totality of gamers nor the prevailing issues surrounding some mechanisms or genres.

I’ll provide a few examples, the first of single-loser games. They conclude their commentary on the mechanism by stating that a ‘bash the loser’ problem can exist in these games, one that presents an innovation horizon for designers to explore. And yes, it can be a problem for some people in some games that employ this mechanic.

Encouraging design innovation is excellent, but at least half their representative games in this category – perhaps more, since I haven’t played each that they list – already avoid this issue amicably in my opinion. This framing of the “problem” also presupposes that it’s a problem in need of solving, when indeed it may not be a widely popular mechanic for this reason but is a draw for some gamers, one should be leaned into at times to elicit the most from this style of game.

This may make a game less commercially viable, and it’s worth pointing this fact out, but to leave it there would again be a narrow view of the various purposes behind design, many of which don’t value commercial appeal.

But this line of criticism of single-loser games is a popular one among a certain subset of hobbyist gamers, so even the threat of “take that” gameplay can be enough to turn them off from trying or enjoying a game.

To each their own in terms of play preferences, of course, so this isn’t to say they’re wrong in that opinion. They’re not, since it’s subjective in nature. But I wasn’t thrilled to only see this viewpoint without its balancing viewpoint being present alongside it.

The authors do a great job most of the time in framing problems as merely “potential” problems, or explaining how something is neither good nor bad, but can be both depending on the context and execution. They even do this with traditionally maligned mechanisms like player elimination and roll & move movement, both of which can be excellent or terrible depending on the design execution. This is commendable perspective from Engelstein and Shalev. So my annoyance is not with their general analytical methods, which are excellent, but that these methods are missing in some key areas.

Two others I could note involve fixed turn order and claimed turn order, wherein they again cite issues/problems with the structure in need of “fixing” (along with various existing fixes) but without considering that these supposed problems are occasionally The Point. Being able to end a game suddenly, immediately, and without a chance for final turns, for instance, can inform core strategies and appeals of some games. As lauded a game as Tigris & Euphrates employs this, for example, and it’s stood the test of time. To the authors’ point, some will cite this as a flaw of the design, but that’s far from the only opinion on it.

Similarly, the inherent imbalances of claimed turn order can create emergent considerations for strategy and player-balancing of the game to account for whomever has had the best luck in this aspect of the game. In the right hands, this is a feature, not a bug, but we’re told the opposite, that it’s a design challenge that must be overcome.

Stated more holistically, these are valid tools in a designer’s toolbox, ones that can create unique and interesting interactions at the table even if some won’t enjoy them (though that’s true of any game/mechanism). Instead, it’s presented only as a negative.

Their commentary for auction mechanisms in general is also worth noting. They do list various positive examples, but the overall tenor of the commentary trends toward the negative, focusing more heavily on problems created by the mechanisms that will provide obstacles for designers. It’s true enough to suggest that modern hobby gaming has trended away from frequent use of auctions in games, but I wonder whether hobby discourse should be framing it as a flaw in the mechanism itself rather than simply shifting trends while still affording it some grace in the form of more recent games to successfully use auctions such as Five Tribes, Nidavellir, Furnace, and others. Shalev and Engelstein might not mean for their treatment of auctions to come across like this, but it did for me.

They’re certainly capable of looking at design issues from multiple angles, and do so frequently. They cite potential issues with real-time games, for example, but then cite a game that didn’t attempt to fix a supposed issue and still works just fine. It’s a great counter-example to include, the type I’d love to see more of to keep the readers’ “idea space” as expansive as possible. Other examples could be named as well, including those I named above about player elimination and roll & move.

So they seem eminently willing to look for counter-examples that show how preferences can inform design decisions. This is excellent; I just wish they had applied a touch more rigor to ensuring that this same treatment is given to each area. Considering who might like a traditionally problematic design idea (and why) is useful as a thought experiment and can also lead to design insights.

I can’t guess the reason for this inconsistency. Perhaps it just made it through editing without anyone saying something. Perhaps the authors’ own preferences informed the framing of these things as default-negative. Or it’s where the online groupthink surrounding some mechanisms has become so pervasive as to be mistaken for a best practice. I can only say that my brow furrowed a bit in frustration at these sections.

It would be a quick fix, at least, and also one I imagine the authors would be happy to make. Something as simple as hedging language about “potential” issues and a consideration of each as a possible boon to a design could be enough to reframe these mechanisms as toolbox ideas rather than items with codified best practices. The authors – again – do this in the vast majority of entries, so I have to believe this is their intent.

Enjoy the Forest, Ignore the Trees

I lose myself in these weeds, though, and risk painting the wrong picture.

This book is a significant achievement and ably handled. I am critical of the points above because I care about the full breadth and depth of experience and preferences in games, which is often wider than anyone imagines. It’s tough for any single book to live up to the totality of this.

The whole, however, does match my expectations, and comes closer to painting a comprehensive picture of the breadth of tabletop game design (via its mechanisms) than any other work I’ve encountered. Only the Board Game Geek database – which itself was informed by this book – matches its density of mechanical concepts.

Did It Help Me as a Game Designer? As a Player?

This is perhaps the only question that matters, right? Did it prove its worth to me as a game designer?

As I said, the steep price for the book makes me hedge slightly. Not since college textbooks have I paid so much for a book, or anywhere near as much. But has it proven useful? Yes, albeit in minor ways thus far.

Simply as an interested gamer, it gave name to a handful of mechanisms that weren’t entirely unknown to me but nevertheless hadn’t registered to me as unique design choices that bring with them equally unique considerations for how they affect a game’s experience. I’m thankful for this expanded gaming lexicon.

I’ve also engaged in some design experiments recently wherein I dissect a game, tear it apart (metaphorically), then put it back together with various variables changed to see what is different about the experience. The goal is to learn to manipulate these variables in desirable ways by iterating on existing designs.

And while I could have done this on my own, the book’s impressive catalog of mechanisms gives me a broader range of ideas to substitute in as I perform these experiments. The hoped-for end results are some interesting design ideas that I can run with and turn into full, unique games of my own design.

Providing brainstorming fodder for designers is an explicit intent of the book, and so it’s fair to say that it succeeded.

Whether or not it will succeed for you is largely going to depend on where you’re at in your board gaming journey and board game designing journey. I think it’s a necessary, interesting, and commendable work overall, one that will provide monumental amounts of value for some, occasional value for others (I suspect I’m in this middle category), and far less for those expecting deep dives into individual mechanisms or those whose academic rigor within tabletop gaming has already overturned many of the stones this book reveals.

Further Reading

Engelstein has written another book on gaming, called Gametek. It’s much less focused on a specific end goal like Building Blocks is, but perhaps is better off for that fact. Many fascinating, illuminating essays line its pages. I’ve written a review of Gametek linked here.

It’s not the only book on gaming I recommend (full list forthcoming), but given that it’s the same author (or one of two), I thought it worth mentioning.