¶ Introduction
This is Cadre and we're talking how to play with Jonathan Liu. So our focus for this week, or this coming session, next month, actually, it's, I think it's the 14th, is going to be on how to play. And whenever those three words are put together, we think of you and the interview we did a decade ago.
10 years ago.
Yeah
¶ Revisiting Past Insights
I didn't know if we wanted to start by just revisiting that to see if if things have changed for you in the decade. Are there new things that you might put on that list that aren't there or is this really been a good guide for you? And for anybody, all this time?
I think a lot of the stuff is still the things that I, I mostly agree with. I think the big caveat I had was, these are things that make playing games great for me. I have found when I teach games, and introduce people to games, these are the kind of the principles and, and kind of ideas that I use. I'm not someone who tends to talk in absolutes, generally speaking.
¶ Mechanics vs. Theme
It starts off with like good mechanics make a game good and a good rule flows easily from a theme. Broken mechanics aren't fixed with a good theme, but themes can improve the game experience. And I think for me, and I'm like, yeah, I am, I have been largely like a mechanics-first sort of person, but I do know that there are people who are definitely theme-first. And they'll, they'll start with, you know, Oh, I, you know, I had this experience recently and I thought this would make a great game.
So then they think about what, you know, how would you turn this. This theme, this setting, this idea into a game, for some people having a strong theme is what makes a game fun, even if mechanically it's less sophisticated or has some issues with it, right? And I, and I was like, there have been some games where I played them and I'm like, yeah, okay, there's some problems with the mechanics here, like there's, there's some imperfections.
There's like stuff, you know, that, that I don't really like about the gameplay or not the gameplay, the game rules. But because of the theme or because of the experience, I've still had a good time with it. But you do have to have something that works.
¶ Player Agency
Right. So it's like, I think my big thing about like player choice and player agency, that's still very high on the list. Like if your players don't have control over what happens in the game at all, that's never enjoyable to me, you know, regardless. I mean, I guess it's no longer what I consider a game, right? It's like, oh yeah, you can enjoy something like that. You have no. Player agency.
I mean, that's like reading a book or watching a movie or, you know, like, but if you're playing a video game and the video game just walks you through a whole bunch of things. That you don't really control. You don't feel like you're playing a game. You feel like you're turning pages, right? Which is a different type of experience. So
The RPG world that's, uh, called railroading. And so, you go into a campaign and there aren't choices or you try to touch the thing that says it doesn't do anything. Touch this other shiny thing. Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, you also had a really good, uh, example of that with, I'm not gonna call it Beloved, but it was one of the games on my shelf as a kid. Candyland. being able to use that rule of agency to improve a game that may not have it.
I thought of you the other day because on Reddit there's a therapist list and someone asked why would you work with children or why wouldn't you work with children and one of the answers was I, I don't work with children because I hate Candyland. And people were talking about how they did like their play therapy was basically doing Candyland all day.
Wow.
That sounds so boring
I would not want to work with kids if all I got to do was play games.
You use a lot of different games, I mean, you use games.
I use games, but not ones that I don't like.
Right. Right. There's so many, there's so many better games out there.
Yeah, yeah, we do a lot of Trash Panda.
I'm trying to remember where I heard the idea from, for like, for Candyland specifically, it was, you know, yeah, Candyland is you draw a card, you go there, right? You draw a card, you go there. The one very simple tweak that they, that I was told was, draw two cards and pick one. And suddenly there's agency. Now it's still a game that doesn't have a whole lot happening. As a game that is meant to.
Teach some very, very basic game structure, like taking turns and identifying colors and knowing, you know, how to move the pawn on a, on a board. Like, I feel like I, I have over the past 10 years become a little more forgiving of Game, games that don't provide a whole lot of choice for, for very young kids because you, you know, it's like they're still learning how to take turns. Right? But I think as, even if it's a choice between two colors, that's not a huge mental load.
You don't want to introduce them to be like, here, have a hand of seven cards, and every time you play one and draw one, like, I think that's a bit too much. If you have a game like Chutes and Ladders or Candyland, where there's literally no choice. At all. Giving someone a bit of choice works, right?
You know, if you're playing the card game of war, that's another game where it's like, yeah, you flip a card and you just go through the deck and so it's entirely determined by, the random order that your deck started in, right? There's no choices at all. I've seen more games now that basically use like a war like mechanic, but have introduced some neat twists so that there are choices involved. When you play more as a kid, it's more just like, ooh, what's gonna happen?
But you don't really think about the fact that The outcome is predetermined before you started playing, right? Like, you can just feed all this into an Excel spreadsheet. You can flip a coin and someone wins. Like, it just takes longer. It's flipping a coin and it's just sitting there spinning. And it's like, well, the excitement is, you know, how long is this thing's going to spin before it falls over?
Most of our War games ended in 52 pickup.
Yeah, you just kind of like, okay, like, fine, we're done. Like,
¶ Boundaries and the Magic Circle
So a lot of times boundaries are the thing that protects you from the outside world that you're your stone fence Or you can't come across this boundary and I'm protecting myself Whereas RCT likes to think of it more as how far can I go before I won't go any further? It turns that model into Fences that denote the edge of, uh, your exploration. Those boundaries can overlap, and that's where we grow.
If you just think of boundaries as a place where you meet, as a place where you can still be authentic and feel safe, rather than sort of the passive, I'm waiting for you to cross this line that I've, and once you do, then I'm out.
When you're playing a game, there is kind of the, there's the magic circle, right? There's the boundary, of we've all entered this space together
Oh, I love that
and the rules of the game allow us to know in which ways we can interact within this game. While we're playing this game, it's okay for me to attack you within the game, within the boundary of the game, right? And there are specific rules about what what I can do. It doesn't mean I can reach across the table and punch you, right? Unless that's the sort of game you're playing, but it does mean like, hey, I can move these people into your space.
On the game and cause a conflict, you know, for me, it's important to know that all of the things that take place inside the game are things that remain inside the game, right? And that is the lesson that, you know, can take some time to learn where, okay, now that the game is over, that no longer applies. There are people who, you know, who carry those things from game to game, which is like, that's the, that's the sort of like, oh, you're bleeding through a boundary that should have been set.
Oh, I'm attacking you in the game because of something that happened outside of the game.
¶ In-Game Conflict
Now that, because I did something to you in the game, you're upset at me outside of the game, your gaming group needs to know how to interact with each other, right? How do you work through conflicts that happen within a game if you're playing a competitive game? How do you feel when someone does something to you in a game? Because it's part of the game rules that they can do that. You know, you can play a cooperative game if you don't like that sort of conflict.
If you specifically say, you know what, that sort of conflict is out of bounds for this particular session. Right? We're, we're going to play a game where there is no opportunity to attack somebody else. Because we know that the players inside this game don't handle that well. Right? Or we still have, we still have some ways to go before we can do that. They allow you to inhabit a space that you would not normally inhabit.
Yeah. In real life here, I want to do this sort of like transgression play without the real life consequences of it. Right. But sometimes there are things that let you work out conflicts, work out how you feel about things work out how you, you know, exploring difficult things. Topics in a way that is a bounded environment that has some sort of like safety rails to it. Right?
And I think that's kind of the other piece of it is if you're playing video, like scary video games or like watching a scary movie, it's like, all right, well, you get to experience some of those emotions and see how you react to things while knowing that you are physically safe from whatever dangers are on the screen or in the game. You're shielded from that, but you're sort of opening a window into that world.
In RPGs, having that session zero setup where you're doing similar types of things, where you're saying, We're about to embark in this maybe multi week, multi month, multi year campaign. And we want to know that we're all in it together. But once you get in, there's also, uh, that X card concept where you're saying, what you just did is something that I don't like.
Part of the agreement is if I throw this card down, then we're going to roll back and not do that, not include that in our game anymore. Have you experienced people needing to exit the game that you've agreed to play in that magic circle, that space? And how do you facilitate that?
That has not come up a lot in the, in the games I've played. Um, and part of it is I don't play as many role playing games where the, the, I guess the content of the game is much more free form based on what the GM wrote, right. Or, you know, you set up and, and, and what the players are doing. Right. I think when you have a role playing game, things can go in a lot more broader directions.
And so that I think having something like that X card is very important to say this particular thing it sort of it breaks the magic circle right it breaks the like, Oh, this is breaking into real world trauma with a lot of the board games, at least, you know, the, the ones that I play don't tend to have in general like a lot of those types of themes.
¶ Sensitive Themes
The freedom to go way off the rails into dangerous territory, right? There's a lot of games, for instance, that use sanity, you know, anything with Lovecraft and cthulhu always have some sort of sanity as like, you've got your health and your physical health and you have sent sanity. Right. And I think that does not treat mental health in a particularly good way.
Like it's not an accurate, Portrayal of mental health and it's a, it's a very stigmatized, you know, sort of like, Oh, your sanity goes down and that, and that causes all, it causes all these different effects. Right. And so I think that's one of those things where you're going to play a game like that, that has some sort of sanity tracker, you have to make sure that everyone in your group. is okay with saying, all right, this game is going to use this mechanic.
If we, we don't like the way that it's portraying mental health, or we feel like it's making light of, um, of mental health, then we can switch to a different game, right? It's kind of baked into those games. I haven't seen Lovecraftian games that handle it better that basically go, Oh, this is actually a much more, you know, sensitive portrayal that kind of takes into account what we know now about mental health.
Like I don't have, I haven't really seen that, you know, I have sort of paid more attention to certain themes in games, right? So things that come up where I'm like, okay, this game really pushes a very colonialist viewpoint. You know, classics like Settlers of Catan, and you started thinking about like, well, what's going on in Settlers of Catan, which is like, you know, like, oh, this was this groundbreaking game that everyone played to get into modern gaming.
And it's like, okay, well, you know, yeah, like you're going out there and you're harvesting resources and building, building out your cities and you're competing with each other. You know, there was this concept of like, oh, it's this, it's this kind of undiscovered island that's just, you know, where we're not taking land from anyway, right? We're just out there, like, it's, it's your colonizer's fantasy because, you know, really, look, look, we're not displacing anyone.
Except that then you think about the fact that there is, however, this robber. Who lives in the desert, because, because there's no place else for the robber to go, and every so often he shows up and steals stuff from you. And it's terrible, like, oh, look at this robber who steals stuff from you. Like, well, but he was there. When you showed up, he started taking all the wheat, and the brick, and the ore, and mining all these mountains.
And so there's this, like, little bit of the, like, huh, well, you know, I never thought about that when I was learning. Catan to begin with. But you think about it now, you're like, Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a reason that newer editions of Catan changed the robber from a black pawn
Wow
to a gray one. Is because people started thinking about what is that? Recently, I played a game, I played Ticket to Ride Legacy, which is a, you know, it's a like a 12 game campaign and it's set, it's in the U. S. Um, and so you start with portions of the map. So it's like the map is kind of a big puzzle piece. Um, and so you start with the east coast. You're, you know, building your train tracks and everything, and you score.
And then at the end of each session, someone gets to decide where to expand, right? So like, oh, you want to expand, you know, now we're in the sort of mid, middle, Midwest here. Oh, now we're going to expand into, you know, down, down to Florida and Alabama. And then like, you start making your way West and the game is set in the, you know, late 1800s, right? So like every time you play, it's like, Ooh, this, this game is, you know, 1870, right? This game is 1872, like, and there is.
A story that plays out right with some fictional characters. So it's like, Oh, there's this like, you know, Mama O'Connell is the, you know, kind of like a another rail baron and she's like she shows up in the event cards and kind of messes with you and she's kind of your antagonist. Right. One of the criticisms I've heard a bit of this game and I think is valid is they have kind of completely removed any sort of conflict with Native Americans in this game.
Like, to the point that they just don't exist. Your expansion, your conflict, is entirely with these fictional robbers and there's treasure hunting. Here's all these things that we made up for you to kind of work against while you're doing your westward expansion, but it's set in a specific time in a specific place. It's not like they didn't make up a land like Catan.
They put it in the U. S. in the 1800s when the rail was expanding and then decided, well, but we removed all the Native Americans so you don't have that unpleasant historical context of it. Instead, we built this thing that's like, yeah, yeah, look, these bad guys, they're clearly bad guys. We can, we can kick them off the land.
Like, you know, I enjoyed the game, and at the same time, this is a weird way to tell the story of Westward Expansion in the U. S. We're just gonna pretend that didn't happen.
And this is where the, the theme, uh, maybe comes into play, cause it wouldn't be hard to make this about, like, terraforming on a planet that actually doesn't have life.
Right.
Um, and maybe, and you'd still have the game mechanics.
Right.
¶ Awareness of Context and History
One of the things I'm hearing from you is that, and from you, is like this Being able to have an awareness of context, and history, and of everyone else in the room. Even the people who aren't in the room and aren't named. For me at least, is how do you play? Like, what things do you do in order to play in a way that is growth fostering?
Well, I mean, I think we've covered some of the important things. I mean, you can't play the game unless you start the game. We described this coming together, which is this agreement. And this agreement has these boundaries that allow people to come in, and interact with each other. They have these rules that are set up so they can, you know, inhabit this space. Um, and you have means to be able to leave if it's too much.
I mean, one of our, like, key insights that we got out of that, uh, interview 10 years ago was, you know, are you still having fun? And that question, we talked about it on an earlier, uh, podcast, um, is something that will come up when we, When we see struggles, um, or see boredom, to be able to ask that question in the moment and then be okay with the game going away and either replace a different thing or that's the end of the game night.
And that's hard for me because I really like closure, but the path forward at that point where you've acknowledged that there's an issue, that this isn't fun for everybody, Is a really important that that that path forward is no longer going to be fun for me either. If all we're doing is just trying to finish the game,
Right.
Like, 1 of the things I'm definitely going to take from today is the idea of sort of shifting boundaries when you're playing a game to thinking of we're all stepping inside this together. That is, that's such a lovely image.
¶ Collaborative Play
The, the other concept we wanted to talk about, which was power with, I mean, that, that is what you're describing is that it's not that you've, Jonathan has carved out this space and I'm now bringing you in, I'm pulling you in, I'm pulling you in. You're using this opportunity to say, Here's a thing we can do together, and it has these themes in it, it has these mechanics. Here's the things to maybe watch out for.
It's a collaborative game, it's a, you know, it's a asymmetrical game, whatever the structure is. Is it something that you want to come into this space to do? To be able to do things like this? Change the agency of it to make house rules that are going to allow everybody to feel included and Like it's their space too. That's very much a power with kind of approach to To the experience and to also to have people say, you know, I don't want to do this anymore Even even though it's not all done.
I mean, that's I think that also exemplifies it.
Uh, I've been playing, uh, Frosthaven with two friends of mine. And that's the, you know, real, it's the, it's the sequel to Gloomhaven. So it's a really big legacy campaign. It's a, you know, a dungeon crawl type game. So you, you move around, you play cards and you move around, you can fight enemies, you know, that sort of thing. And, and you, you know, You go through all of these different scenarios, and so like each one you do unlocks the next one, or unlocks some other story bits.
You know, it's a heavy game. You, each session takes, you know, a couple hours, um, to play. It's one of these games that has a whole bunch of rules, right? Lots of well defined rules about like, here's how the monsters move, here's what you can do on your turn, all of these sorts of things. When I'm playing with, uh, with these friends, And they have a lot more experience with, with both Frosthaven and Bloomhaven than I do. Like, They'll say the point of the game is to have fun, right?
And it was like, there is that it doesn't mean we throw all the rules down the window and go, oh, just, we just, we just want, right. Cause they do want to like play to our best ability. We're going to play this thing, but there are times where we're playing. It was like, we were really close on that one or, you know, here's how much XP you need to level up. And it's like, look, I'm like three away from, like, it's out of a hundred, right?
It's like, I can wait until the next scenario, and we'll get more, and then I'll level up. Or we can just go ahead and level up now, because it'll make the next scenario more fun, because, you know, we got a little more equipment, right? Because the point is to, like, have fun telling the story together, and we've all agreed. We're not playing a tournament. No one's like, no one's, no one's gonna like say, no, you didn't, you didn't officially complete this scenario.
You need to go back and do it again, right? It's, it's kind of like, hey, you know what? I think we did close enough. Let's just call it good, right? And there are also times where we're playing or like, oh, well, you're supposed to finish the scenario, but we go, you know what? Clearly we're not going to make it. Right, we're not gonna make it through this one. Yeah. Like, do you actually want to play out? And then sometimes, and it's a couple, right?
So sometimes they argue because one of them will be like, No, I'm gonna, I'm totally gonna play out this until I'm, I'm, until, like, my character falls down. And one of them's like, No, I'm done. Like, I'm not having fun right now. Like, this has become a slog right now, this particular scenario. And so, you know, let's just call it, I do have that. Like, Oh, I hate not completing a game.
I go into it differently now where there are times where I'm like, Hey, you know, I know this is a new game. I haven't played it. No, like y'all haven't played it before. So you don't know if you like, right. So there are times like here, we're going to introduce this game.
¶ Learning New Games
I'm going to tell you a little bit about it because I think you might like it. So let's get it out and we'll try it. And we'll play like, you know, a round or whatever it is. Right. And then say, okay, what'd you all think going into it with the preparation of. We might not play this whole game helps me. To, to, you know, kind of let go of the, that, that sense of, Oh no, I need to finish this game today. Making people, making people do an activity that they're not enjoying. That's also not,
Yeah
you know, that's, that's not worth it either.
Particularly since I've been focused on RPGs, trying to learn them enough to share and being very hyper aware of the chance that somebody's not going to like it.
And therefore not wanting to start it, it's not just that I would like to see it to a conclusion so I could learn it, but it's also I just don't know how far it would get and I don't want to like drag people along as I'm going to for me it that the idea of going back to that magic circle and having those conversations about what this is and having people like opt into trying it, um, is just a really important, um, Part of that, I think, for just even proposing new things, you know, there's
so many games out there and a lot of them are on my shelf that are just not used and it's not because they're not good games. I have no idea. Um, but it's just that I, we haven't had the right circle, uh, together, or I felt very self conscious about learning it or proposing it or whatever, because. Thank you. I'm just afraid of that no as well or that experience for it. And then what if I ask a second time for this other game, you know, I don't want to ruin it for the future.
And so there's, there's, I think, a relationship that has to happen ahead of time to, to make that stronger, uh, for whoever's running it as well as whoever's just playing it.
Yeah, that makes me think of relational images too. Like what? What you expect going in from the people around you, like, what does it mean for the game to wind up being a hot mess? Is that okay? Or is, does that have a loaded meaning for like your basic worth as a human or?
I could put a lot of weight on that.
Yeah, I'm learning some stuff here. And as you were talking about, like, if it's gonna be a really complicated game, you're not gonna be able to finish it, but it's okay to, like, put it out there, or if you're learning as you go, and so maybe you go ahead and level up when you're at 97. I think of one kiddo that I work with that we, they really like to learn new games, and that's really hard when you've got a time slot.
Mm hmm.
Sometimes, if there's a new game, like, we've been playing Leaf,
Mmm. Mmm-hmm.
Which is really pretty, but also takes forever to set up, and I don't, I can't get it set up, like, before we, you know, Meet because I don't have that particular day is not a day where I could do that. But we'll have a day where we're like just learning on that day. So we'll play it, but we're not anticipating that we'll finish it when the bell rings and our time is up and it's up. And then there are days that we're playing it. And then we sort of have this understanding that if the bell rings.
we might go a little bit longer. And that freedom really helps. Then the next week we can dive in or we'll do the little play to see to learn how to do it and they'll be like Mm mm. I don't like this. And then we don't.
The board games that are like little books to be able to learn. To maybe make mini games out of the rules. This hour game, which is another hour of learning on top of it to get everything right. But maybe we just start by picking out like one of the interactions and trying to like set that up like a, like a chess scenario or something where you're, you're, you don't worry the fact that. It's not going to be a complete game. You're just trying to learn this one part of it.
And then the next time you do, you don't have to learn that thing anymore. You can build on it. That maybe that's a way to, uh, to chunk it up a little better. And, you know, nobody has to have this long term commitment of us in order to, to get it started.
There are a few games, not very many that I've seen that do exactly that. Instead of like, here's the rules, play it. There's tutorials. There's like, the good and the bad, right? The good is, if you sit down and you walk through this tutorial with someone, then you can learn the game, and it will introduce you to the concepts in the order that you need to know them. It's like, okay, here we go. Oh, we did this, we did this, we did this, and it builds on it.
It's a lot harder if, then, you want to bring in a new person to play the game. Most of your group has already done the tutorial. They don't want to do it again. Most of the tutorials are not written in a way that they're going to be interesting the second time around. It's something that's done a lot in video games, right? Old Atari and Nintendo games. You had that little booklet that you would read before you start the game. It tells you what buttons do and all that stuff. And it was like.
Yeah, video games now don't do that, right? You're just like, oh, okay, well, you know you're gonna move around, and you just start pushing, oh, you know, you probably push A. It'll do something when you push A, right? And then it's like, oh, and as you start, then it's like, there's something that tells you what to do, but it's all in game. I remember, like, you know, playing the first Halo. Oh, we just woke you up from cryogenic sleep. We need to calibrate you. So here, look over there.
Okay, look this way. And you're like, oh, well, how do you do that? The little thing shows up on screen. It's like, here, you just learned how to look around now because it's all in story. And it's like, oh, here, we're going to test your reflex here. Will you jump? You know, it is a push a, you know, like, Oh, okay. Pushing a jumps, right? All of these things are built into the game and 30 minutes later is like, Hey, you know what? We just gave you this equipment. Here's how you use it.
And it's like, Oh, it's all part of the game. Whereas I think that's harder to do with a board game. It's easier to do when it's a single player game. You're learning this and you can learn it at your own pace. But if you're just playing a board game with physical analog components, it is hard to set up that sort of structure. in a way that walks you through things at the right time.
¶ Connecting Through Play
When you play, what, why are you playing? Going back to Candyland, where we started, um, you're playing with a kid who really needs to experience something that they can control.
You know, like, they've got a life that is so out of control, they need something that they can manage in the game, and maybe what they need is to be able to look through all the cards and pick out what they want, and pick out the one that goes to the big pile of candy or whatever, and play that, and I think if the goal is connect, And if you're playing with someone who is aggressive or unpleasant or obnoxious in some way that you're also able to, to say, Oh, this is aggravating.
This is what I like about playing games. And this is what I need in the room. And that gets you closer to your goal of connecting through play rather than whomping this person.
That's a hard skill to do that in the moment, to be able to either recognize something, name it, or call somebody out. Uh, particularly if it's, uh, there's pain involved, there's something that you experienced or the other person more often than not we'll just sit and endure and wait till the end of the hour, the session, whatever, and then, you know, try again or not.
Uh, which is the danger your game, uh, Emperor's New Clothes, what I love about that so much when we, we get people who get it and are willing to, to play is that there's this initial freedom to say, well, if I can make up all the rules, then I'm going to make up the rules that are going to benefit me the most. And while that goes on, there also very quickly becomes the sense of community.
But. Somebody else has made this rule and now it's constraining me in a way that I have to be able to acknowledge so maybe I've got the card that is going to allow me to win or allow me to move forward, but I still have to respond to what the other person contributed when it's done well, and you've got the people involved that are are playing along. It's just a really connective game and it there's no rules.
There's no When conditions other than did you have a good time and more often than not we do
¶ See You at the Summit
But I really appreciate you spending some time with us today Jonathan is going to be joining us Remotely for a session on Friday afternoon to talk about this topic and others that we'll come up with as we get closer But our relational summit is going to be on the fifth through eighth. So you'll be on the sixth And I'm really looking forward to talking with you more about this.
Yeah, looking forward to it.
This episode of Cadre is a production of the Bloomington Center for Connection, an organization using relational cultural theory to promote social change through connection. This conversation between Jonathan Liu, Kevin Makice, and Amy Makice, LCSW, took place on June 23rd, 2024, both online and in Bloomington, Indiana, and was edited for this podcast by Kevin Makice. Theme music lovingly sampled from Positive Thinking and Serpantine by Vlad Gluschenko.
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