Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers

Chapter EightMovement

Introduction

The movement of game pieces is so fundamental to tabletop games that “your move” is synonymous with “your turn,” even for games whose play does not involve moving pieces (such as Go, Sprouts, and Pente). This chapter examines how movement and space can be used in games.

The learning objectives for this chapter are:

1. Understand the characteristics of discrete and continuous space.
2. Become familiar with the typical ways of presenting game space and having pieces move through it.

Continuity

Many tabletop games take place across a series of “discrete spaces.” A game space is discrete when all the locations within its boundary are treated as being the same position (Schell 2008, 130). A Chess board’s 8 ...