Podcast Archives - Board Game Design Lab · Gabe Barrett

How to Design Games that Tell Stories with Ignacy Trzewiczek

·1 hr 3 min·4 clips

Ignacy Trzewiczek says a game should leave players saying more than “I won having 85 points.”

Story starts with player memory. The host says players usually do not retell a game by listing components. They talk about the army, the finish line, or the weird thing that happened inside the world. That is where the design problem lives. The conversation treats storytelling as something built into the play, not fiction pasted on afterward. Theme matters. Mechanisms matter. So does the total feel of the game once people are actually at the table. The guest keeps the romance in check. He describes design as beginning with a prototype that does not work, then grinding through changes and playtests until it finally becomes fun. That can get miserable. For months, a designer may leave sessions knowing one fix helped, another part broke, and the complaints are still coming. He is pretty blunt about the loop. Once a prototype works and people like it, the publisher can move it along, and the designer starts over with another raw, unreliable idea. The host treats that honesty as useful, especially for newer designers who usually hear the exciting version of making games. The practical advice stays close to the table. Better storytelling comes from making players feel pulled into the world through theme, mechanisms, and the moments the system creates. Learning comes from playing widely too. Near the end, the guest says he plays constantly, then sometimes switches into professional mode and writes down what worked or failed. Those notes become his own encyclopedia of good advice, built from moments he loved, disliked, or wanted to understand. The move is simple enough, even if the work is not: watch what players remember, test until the system creates those memories, and keep stealing lessons from every game you play.

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