We all play games. Board games, card games. Solving problems and competing against each other on a small scale is part of the human condition.
It makes sense to reflect games and game-playing in fantasy fiction. Games – real and invented – are common in contemporary fantasy novels. For example, Tak in Rothfuss’s Temerant, and Gwent in The Witcher. Games are fun to come up with in your own stories, but you can take advantage of them to make the rest of the story richer, too.
Benefits of Games in Fiction
Having your characters play a game (once, or many times!) in your stories has several benefits that might not immediately be apparent.
Characterization: How does each character play the game? Are they strategic? Foolhardy? Do they insist on winning?
Conflict: A game is a conflict in microcosm, which lets you explore how character A and character B ‘battle’ each other without affecting any conflicts in the main storylines.
Themes: Similarly, the game and gameplay can resonate with the major themes you’re writing about. Take a look at the examples I’ve given from Talio’s Codex and The Library at Eventide, below.
Relationship: The game can mirror, subvert or advance the relationships between the players. It can create intimacy between them, understanding, or hostility and conflict.
Worldbuilding: The game can pull out elements of your world. A land of castles and conquest might have a board game like chess. A cozy world might have a cooperative card game with the names of towns on the cards.
Stage Business: Stage business in theatre means ‘the things actors are doing with their hands while they’re acting.’ In fiction, playing a game gives your characters the opportunity to do something that’s disconnected from the primary plot, giving the reader a break but still keeping a sense of tension and interest.
Overall Reinforcement: Your game scenes can do double, triple or even quadruple duty by hitting on the notes above. Consider how your characters play the game, what aspects of the world are reflected in the game, how the game can advance the players’ relationships or reflect them, and how the game mirrors or subverts larger themes and messages in the story.
Building Your Game
The best advice I can give you is to make your game as simple as possible. Simple in terms of what is exposed to the reader, not necessarily the game itself. By that I mean the game may have dozens of different cards, dice, boards, etc. but you only need to show enough to make it feel realistic. Similarly, you don’t have to go through all the rules or hands or turns. As with other worldbuilding, you need to provide enough information for it to be plausible and realistic (unless you’re planning on turning it into a real game at some point like Tak or Gwent).
I go into detail about two examples of games in my novels below, and you’ll see the thought process I went through to come up with the board game of Four Cities and the card game of Caster.
Don’t knock yourself out trying to make the game ‘work.’ It just has to look credible enough as seen through the players’ (and reader’s) eyes.
Example: Talio’s Codex (Four Cities)
In the world of Talio’s Codex, there are four interlinked cities, each with their own different culture. At one point, protagonist Talio visits the man who he helped beat a murder rap, Pazli, in his cloister:
Talio glanced around the small room. He was surprised to recognize a wooden box on the shelves. He hadn’t seen the game since he was a child in Aurania. “Do you play, then?” he said, pointing to it.
“Four Cities?” Pazli asked. “When I was younger. Not so much, now.”
I conceived of Four Cities as a combination of a tower defense game (where the players build actual towers from game pieces) and a Eurogame involving collecting and spending resource cards. Beyond that, I didn’t have too detailed an idea as to the mechanics, except what was needed for the scene:
Pazli laid down a spy card and picked up two knowledge cards in return….The cannon piece was now in play. Pazli had played his spy card instead of holding it for this moment.
This is a typical example of what we see of the gameplay. We can tell that cards are played and exchanged, and a tower is built in the meantime, but that’s about it.
This scene serves a few different purposes in the story:
- Characterization: Talio is over-confident in his game-playing skills, but finds Pazli a worthy opponent: “Talio found himself invested in the game. He had always been competitive, always focused on winning. During the hearing, he’d enjoyed sparring with Cale and ultimately beating him. But here in the cloister with Pazli, he found the other man a challenge. His strategy was excellent, his mid-game formidable. For an Incarnite.”
- Worldbuilding: As I mentioned, there are four cities in the novel. I was worried that the reader might forget which city was which. This game was a way to remind them of the ‘personalities’ of each city: “Pazli played a typical Damirian approach to the game: acquisition and conquest, risking his position and leaving himself open to flank attacks.”
- Themes: The underlying theme of the game is building a tower and defending yourself from attack. One of the major themes of the novel is how we build walls around ourselves, preventing intimacy: “Talio wanted to leave, to go back to the Double Moon. To figure out how to get clients, before he lost his last chance at staying in Nuciferia for good. Four Cities was a game of building walls, but perhaps this was a night for tearing them down.”
- Relationship: This game and scene allows Talio and Pazli to get just a tiny bit closer: “Here was an intellectual equal, someone who was not afraid to challenge him, wall or no wall. He was aroused. Pazli’s deep voice, his physical presence, his scent that faintly hung in the room about them. He had conquered Talio…in the game, at least.”
- Stage Business: Talio and Pazli discuss several things during the game: Why Pazli had remained silent at a critical point in the murder hearing, how he came to know a noblewoman, Talio’s difficulty in finding new clients, and a favor Pazli wants of Talio. All interleaved with the game.
Example: The Library at Eventide (Caster)
In The Library at Eventide, one of the main characters, Garris, plays Caster, a card game with the pirate Penscome. He travels with Penscome for many years, and Penscome teaches him the game early on.
I imagined Caster as something like gin rummy, with circular cards and pegs representing Garris, Penscome and the imaginary ‘Caster’ moving along a circular cribbage-like board:
It was a complex, mystifying game. Mostly because neither Garris nor Penscome were competing to be the winner. There was a third, imaginary player called the Caster. The goal of the game was for the Caster to win, not either of them. But Penscome always won, somehow.
Caster is intended to be a cooperative game: the players are intended to sacrifice their progress so that the Caster comes out ahead. Penscome refuses to play it that way. We see a bit of gameplay:
At this point in the game, Garris had the chance to move ahead, or to advance the Caster. He chose to advance the Caster’s peg on the track, as he always did.
There are several scenes where Garris and Penscome play Caster over the years, illuminating various facets of the novel’s story:
- Characterization: Garris is on a mission to help Eran, the man he loves. He is rather selfless, and this shows in how he plays Caster: “Garris supposed he could learn to play the same way, to deceive the pirate the way Penscome deceived him. But what was the point in that?” Penscome, on the other hand, simply wants to win, to rule and to command. Penscome is using Garris’s mission to acquire power. Similarly, in Caster, Penscome cares little for the goal of the game: “It was a game of sacrifice; both players had to place the interests of the Caster ahead of theirs in order for all of them to win. But Penscome did not care about the Caster’s interests, or Garris’s.”
- Worldbuilding: I didn’t use Caster to do much worldbuilding, although its origin is a mystery. When Garris becomes separated from Penscome, he starts trying to find another copy of the game: “Garris had looked in every town he passed through for a Caster set, but nobody had ever heard of it. It occurred to him that Penscome might have created it themselves, but he could not believe it.”
- Themes: One of the primary themes of the novel is that collaboration and cooperation are necessary for the world to advance. The whole point of Caster is to sacrifice oneself for the greater good. Over the years, Garris models this behavior to Penscome, who insists on taking the opposing perspective. Although they do come to an understanding at some point…
- Relationship: Garris and Penscome spend years together in a sort of mentor/mentee, frenemy relationship. Playing Caster is somewhat of a bonding experience for them, no matter how frustrated Garris gets at constantly losing.
- Stage Business: I needed something for Garris and Penscome to do besides their main mission (planting whispertongue). This gave me some stage business for them to engage in when they weren’t planting or dealing with the various towns they come across. It was also a way to show time passing, as they play through the years.
Takeaway: Creating a game for your fantasy story can deepen characterization, worldbuilding and themes.