In this post I am attempting to make the same point in more carefully considered sentences. But feel free to stop reading now and watch the video instead.
Something I appreciate about board games (or at least the good ones) is elegance of design. Simple rules which hang together to produce rich and satisfying gameplay. I picked Cartagena as my example because the rules boil down to two simple actions. Either play a card to move a pirate forward to the symbol on the card. Or move a pirate backwards to meet one/two other pirates and draw one/two cards.
From this there emerges an interesting game. The only way to move forward is by playing cards and the only way to draw cards is to move backwards. So when do you push on ahead, and when do you keep falling back to collect the necessary resources for a later advance? And you soon discover that you must keep a watchful eye open for a chain of covered symbols, allowing you (or your rival pirate) to make a dramatic leap forward.
I hadn't heard of this game until it was pointed out to me on a 'bring and buy' stall. I bought it on a fellow gamer's recommendation and so far have not regretted my purchase.
But more to the point: Elegant rules don't just write themselves. They are the work of a designer. In this case a chap called Leo Colovini (whose name I mispronounce on the video. Sorry, Leo.) A quick check on Board Game Geek reveals that he has designed many games, of which I have played just one other - Meridian - which as I recall also had relatively simple rules and the same kind of intellectual challenge.
Over the last few years I have encountered enough really good and well-designed games to have developed a taste for particular designers and even begin to recognise their individual 'style'. I have learned to admire the creativity of someone who can invent a set of rules for moving bits of wood and card around on a table in order to produce a pleasurable and engrossing experience.
Then I turn to the design of the universe and find I have to multiply that admiration a thousandfold.
The universe works by a set of rules about the interaction of subatomic particles in the environment of a four dimensional space-time continuum - or eleven dimensional or whatever the latest count of dimensions is thought to be. Yet these rules work so elegantly together that they produce the universe. Not just elements and stars and planets. Not just amino acids and blood vessels and aardvarks. Not just human beings and emotions and abstract concepts. But imaginative brains which are able to design and implement their own creations. And so there has come into existence the concept of blogging in which pixels on a screen can be interpreted as words and can stimulate particular thoughts in the minds of those who see them. (That's you, dear reader.) And there has come into existence stirring music. And whodunits. And smartphones. And Strictly Come Dancing. And Go Ape. And the pleasure of being allowed to lick the bowl when one's wife has made a chocolate cake. And not to forget the delightful discovery of satisfying gameplay from elegant board game rules.
And the thing is that every bit of this (and everything else in the universe which I don't have time to list) emerges from the beautifully designed set of rules which we call 'the laws of physics'. Impressed as I am by the hugeness, the intricacy and the variety of God's creation, I can't help but be even more impressed that all this complexity and depth arises from a relatively simple and (verging on) comprehensible set of rules.
I stand in awe of God's ability as a designer.
No comments:
Post a Comment