Designing Games Based on Real-Life Systems with Ben Rosset

May 25, 2022·58 min·5 clips

Why games based on real-world systems are easier to teach and more intuitive for players.

Systems are the question here. Gabe starts with the real world as design material: what happens when a game mechanism comes from real life, real world stuff? Ben gives it a useful split. Some games model systems, where the rules try to echo how something works outside the box. Agricola is the first anchor. Ben points to house growth and having kids as rules that feel tied to real constraints. Then the talk moves outward. Rising Sun is closer to world building, even with its reasonably accurate map of Japan and its loose link to actual Japanese clans that might have existed years ago. Ben does not make the line too neat, which helps. Some games mix both approaches. Honey Buzz is the cleanest middle case. Bees selling at a market is fantasy, but hive-building and communal work still come from real behavior. That is the useful design lesson: borrow the part of a real system that gives play some bite, then leave room for invention. Abstract games sit in another lane. Blockus and Tic-Tac-Toe work without a modeled system or a built fictional world, and that is freeing. Not every design needs a deep theme engine. Not every theme has to explain every rule. The episode has a shop-talk feel. Gabe keeps it warm and plainspoken, while Ben brings examples that make the spectrum easy to picture. The closing advice stays simple: keep designing, keep playtesting, and keep creating great games.

As heard by us

A clear-eyed look at where board games model systems and where they simply invent a world.

This episode takes up a practical design question: when does a board game try to mirror the real world, and when does it choose fiction instead?

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Why you'd press play

Hear a practical breakdown of systems modeling versus world building.

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