Feeling-Blocks Catalogue — boardgameBuilder v1
Status: v1 draft for KB assembly Date: 24 April 2026 Role in architecture: Intent layer. Dragged onto the canvas "What we want" region. Feeds the Stage 2 intent-service channel. Separate from the six mechanic dimensions.
Design principles
- Plain school-child vocabulary. Not game-design jargon. "excited" not "high arousal". "sneaky" not "asymmetric information with deceptive intent".
- Play experiences, not game genres. "tense" (a feeling), not "thriller" (a genre).
- Orthogonal where possible. Children should be able to pick 2-4 feelings without every combination feeling contradictory. Some contradictions are deliberate (together + sneaky) — the tool surfaces them as tensions.
- Short. One or two words per block. If you can't say it in two words, the children won't remember it.
- Soft cap of ~5 blocks on the shelf. The catalogue is 15, the canvas holds up to ~5. The group curates.
The 15 feeling-blocks
Colour family: Red / coral (all feeling-blocks share a colour to visually separate them from mechanic blocks).
| Block | What it feels like in play | Supported by (mechanical tendency) | Opposed by (mechanical tendency) |
|---|---|---|---|
| excited | Loud table. Big swings. You can't look away. | push-your-luck, direct-confrontation, race, dice | solo-in-parallel, mostly-skill, long turns |
| clever | You feel smart when you play well. Your choices matter. | mostly-skill, hand-management, full-information | mostly-chance, random-draw |
| silly | Laughing at what just happened. Absurd moments. | absurd theme, direct-confrontation, push-your-luck, bluffing | abstract theme, mostly-skill, long turns |
| tense | You're on edge. Something could go wrong any moment. | push-your-luck, hidden-identity, cooperative-survival, timers | full-information, mostly-skill race |
| together | You and your friends are in it as one. Shared fate. | fully-cooperative, team-vs-team, shared-objective | direct-confrontation, last-standing, traitor |
| sneaky | Hiding things, tricking people, secret plans. | hidden-hands, hidden-identity, bluffing, traitor | full-information, fully-cooperative |
| lucky | The dice or the draw felt magical. You got away with it. | mostly-chance, push-your-luck, dice-rolling | mostly-skill, full-information |
| in charge | You're directing something. Deep decisions have weight. | worker-placement, area-control, hand-management | roll-and-move, mostly-chance |
| surprised | Something unexpected keeps happening. | hidden-hands, chance-with-mitigation, narrative-completion | full-information, mostly-skill |
| thoughtful | You sit back and think. Time to plan. | mostly-skill, worker-placement, full-information | push-your-luck, direct-confrontation, timers |
| fast | The game moves. Short turns, quick rounds. | drafting, trick-taking, roll-and-move, push-your-luck | worker-placement, negotiation |
| unfair (in a fun way) | Someone got wrecked. Everyone laughed. Including them. | direct-confrontation, take-that, traitor, last-standing | fully-cooperative, shared-objective |
| careful | One wrong move and you're in trouble. Precision matters. | cooperative-survival, hidden-hands cooperation, worker-placement | push-your-luck, mostly-chance |
| daring | You tried something risky and it paid off (or didn't). | push-your-luck, bidding, direct-confrontation | mostly-skill, full-information, solo-in-parallel |
| friendly | Warm. Nobody's out to get anyone. | fully-cooperative, shared-objective, indirect-via-board | direct-confrontation, traitor, last-standing |
How feeling-blocks work in the pipeline
Stage 1 — Human qualification
The group drags 2-4 feeling-blocks to the "What we want" shelf. No AI. Order doesn't matter. Blocks can be added or removed at any time during building.
Stage 2 — Intent-service channel
For each feeling-block on the shelf, the rules body looks up which mechanical elements in the "Our game" region support that feeling and which oppose it. The system produces one of three verdicts for the whole assembly:
- matches — All (or most) feeling-blocks are supported by the mechanical choices; none are opposed.
- partly matches — Some feeling-blocks are supported, others are opposed or unsupported.
- pulling apart — The majority of feeling-blocks are opposed by the mechanical choices. The game being built will not feel like what the group said they wanted.
When feeling-blocks themselves are internally contradictory (e.g. together + sneaky + unfair-in-a-fun-way), the verdict is pulling apart — but the narration names it as "you want different kinds of feelings at once — that's interesting, but one game can't easily do all of them."
Stage 3 — Narration register
The Stage 3 prompt receives both the mechanical-pair verdicts AND the intent-service verdict. The feedback states both in plain words (since 16 October 2026 assembled in code from the knowledge base, with no model):
- First paragraph: mechanical consequence ("what this combination tends to do")
- Second paragraph: intent-service ("does this match what you wanted")
- If both agree → short affirmation + one or two games that do this
- If they disagree → surface the tension: "your combination makes sense on its own, but it tends to produce a game that feels more X than Y — and you said you wanted Y"
- Register: surfacing, never corrective. The group decides what to do.
Notes on the "opposed by" column
The "opposed by" column is where intent-service does its real work. A feeling is opposed by a mechanic when the mechanic's characteristic play experience pulls in the opposite direction. Example: thoughtful is opposed by push-your-luck because push-your-luck rewards gut-level quick decisions, not deliberation. Clever is opposed by mostly-chance because chance minimises the impact of skillful play.
Some pairs are deterministic opposites (you can't have both feel strong at once). Others are soft opposition (a skilled designer can build a game that partly does both — e.g. together + sneaky is present in cooperative-with-traitor games like Dead of Winter, but the two feelings still pull against each other).
The rules body encodes both hard and soft opposition. Hard opposition triggers a pulling apart verdict. Soft opposition lowers the match score but does not alone trigger it.
Shelf dynamics
- Soft cap: ~5 feeling-blocks. No hard limit. The UI may display a subtle warning at 6+ ("that's a lot of feelings — can one game really have all of these?").
- Order-independent: the shelf is a basket, not a sequence.
- Removal: drag off to remove. No confirmation.
- Empty shelf: intent-service channel stays quiet. Narration mentions mechanical consequence only.
- 1 feeling-block on shelf: intent-service is binary (matches or opposed) — still useful for the workshop.
Open design questions (for after the weekend)
- Do 15 feelings feel like too many to school children? Watch for paralysis vs engagement.
- Does the soft cap work? Do groups naturally pick 2-4, or do they try to pick all of them?
- Are there feelings missing that children reach for but the catalogue doesn't have? ("scary", "romantic", "weird" — possibly add.)
- Is the "red/coral" colour the right signal? Feeling-blocks are different from mechanic blocks — does the colour distinction land?
These are grounding questions, not spec questions. Decide after the workshops.
Next: interactions-draft.json via clustered Perplexity generation (pending MCP reconnect) or training-knowledge generation flagged as unverified.