My early designs had a recurring blind spot I didn't know how to name.

The games felt thin in ways I couldn't pin down — moments of tension, sure, but no real social drama. Moments of achievement, but nothing shared. I was designing across two or three emotional categories and leaving the rest empty — not because I'd made a deliberate choice, but because I'd never mapped the full territory.

There are at least 6 distinct trigger categories in board games: self-directed achievement, social and interpersonal, information and hidden knowledge, risk and tension, momentum, and identity and investment.

Most designs — including my own early ones — cluster in two or three.

The diagnostic I now use: which of these moments can my game produce reliably, and which are happening entirely by accident.