Something's been bugging me since my last session of gaming.  The Lumbersmiths group got together last week for our regular Friday gaming session.  We played a nice set of games:  Star Wars: Epic Duels, Havoc, Ave Caesar, Mall of Horror and Beowulf.  Two players hadn't played Beowulf before, three had (including me).  Here's the thing that bugged me:  The theme of the game was universally discarded by everyone.  Now granted, Beowulf has a rather tacked-on theme.  The game could be about any sort of story-like journey and the gameplay could remain the same.  In fact, someone suggested you could easily lift the Beowulf theme and replace it with Ulysses without batting an eye.

When explaining rules, I always make sure to incorporate the game's theme.  I'm careful to use the proper names for the game's components.  Caylus' wooden cubes get called by their proper names (food, stone, cloth, etc.) rather than "pink cubes" and "gray cubes".  Medici's trade goods get a similar treatment;  cloth, dye and fur.  And when I explained the Beowulf rules, I was careful to use the proper names for the symbols;  fighting, friendship and wit.  But something happened during the course of the game.  "Friendship" quickly turned to "horns" and "courage" became "fists".  Somewhere along the lines, the theme completely broke down and took a backseat to gameplay and strategy.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not a sucker for theme.  I enjoy a nice game of Descent with it's thick fantasy theme, or Twilight Imperium for its epic space opera subject.  But I enjoy these games mostly for the gameplay.  If the games sucked, I wouldn't be forgiving just because I like the subject matter..  I'm not likely to play Warcraft or DOOM, even if I enjoyed their computer counterparts.  The games don't seem very interesting to me, and the theme doesn't make me want to play.  But when I play a game, I want it to have some sort of tie-in to a story or a setting.  I need enough of a theme to keep things interesting.  In fact, this may be why I generally don't prefer abstract games.  I enjoyed Ingenious, and to a lesser extent Yinsh, but if given the choice I'd rather play a Euro game set in the Renaissance era.

After playing with my Lumbersmiths friends for so long, they generally prefer a little theme, too.  So why the breakdown with Beowulf?  I've been thinking about it since last Friday, and I think I've found a possible answer.  We use the phrase "tacked-on" a lot.  That was my initial reaction, but what does it really mean?  After a bit of self-indulgent pondering, I've concluded it means that the theme has nothing to do with the actual game mechanics.  Bear with me while I try to explain what I mean.

I mentioned Caylus and Medici before.  Why is it easier to call those games' components by their real names than it is with Beowulf?  Maybe it's because when you spend a food, a stone and a wood cube to build a part of the castle in Caylus, it almost makes sense.  The
mechanic of building a castle involves taking away raw resources (your wooden cubes) and building something (placing a piece of the castle).  That makes sense.  Similarly, in Medici you're filling up the holds of your ships with trade goods.  The matching mechanic is acquiring a card (a trade good) and placing it in your holds (one of three imaginary card slots in front of you).  But with Beowulf, the theme has nothing to do with mechanics.  It could be argued that you're using friendship and wit to trick the evil sea hag, but when you're drawing cards from the deck hoping to see another "fox" on the card, it doesn't much feel like you're a part of the story.

In fact, I find the same problem with another Knizia game - Taj Mahal.  Supposedly you're influencing the monk, the princess or the vizier to build palaces, but somehow it makes more sense to say "I've got 2 blue, a green, and an elephant".  The palace-building theme seems to take a back seat to the set collecting of colors.

You'd think I had a point to all this rambling, but I don't have any answers.  I only have questions.  One of the things I'm most curious about is whether there is any correllation to the design process.  I wonder if games with weaker themes have less attention paid to theme during design.  Is the theme thought of much later in these cases?  Does Herr Knizia start with some game mechanics, write some rules, and then think "Hey, maybe Beowulf would look cool on the board".  Somehow I doubt it, but I have no better explanation.

But hey, "orange" or "monks", it doesn't really matter.  Taj Mahal will always be tops in my book.