Marginalia: An Overview
MARGINALIA
With plural agreement. Notes, commentary, and similar material written or printed in the margin of a book or manuscript. Also, in extended use: notes, comments, etc., which are incidental or additional to the main topic. Also in singular: a note or comment of this kind.
(Oxford English Dictionary)
The Marginalia is the place for the things that don't quite belong anywhere else- but are too interesting to leave out.
It isn't the rulebook, newsletter, or even a sales pitch. It is where I get to explore the ideas, stories, research, mistakes, discoveries, and occasional rabbit holes that surround the creation of Writing with Shakespeare, and occasionally the broader work of Board Boss. Here you'll find discussions of game design, historical research, inspirations, discarded mechanics, playtesting, manufacturing decisions, and a few things I spent too much time thinking about.
The name comes from a historical practice.
Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg's movable-type printing press transformed printing in Europe. Gutenberg's design improved upon existing screw-type presses by allowing printers to arrange individual letters and symbols, move them around, and reuse them. Instead of carving an entire page into a single wooden block, a printer could assemble a page from individual pieces of type and then use those same pieces again.
That innovation helped create the conditions for the widespread production of printed books.
By Shakespeare's time, literacy had spread beyond the wealthiest classes of England, and books had become an increasingly important part of English culture. But books were still expensive objects. Paper and parchment were valuable, and every page represented a significant investment of time and material.
Every page was valuable, and readers made use of the space they had.
In addition to filling any blank pages with notes, book owners and scholars often wrote their thoughts directly into the margins of the books they were reading. They recorded arguments, corrections, questions, observations, translations, disagreements, and discoveries. Sometimes these notes were practical. Sometimes they were scholarly. Sometimes they were little more than a reader thinking out loud.
By 1819, scholars began referring to this practice by name: Marginalia.
I like that idea.
The most interesting parts of a book aren't always in the main text. Often, the dialogue created between an author and their reader is as fascinating as the text itself. It might be a quote the passage made them think of, a discourse against the author’s stated purpose, or even a recipe inspired by the text.
That's what I want this section of the Board Boss website to be.
The games themselves are the main text. The rules tell you how to play. The cards tell you what you can do. The finished product is what ultimately goes on the table.
But around that finished product is a whole world of decisions.
Why did I make this mechanic?
Why did I remove that one?
What inspired a particular card?
Why is the game called Writing with Shakespeare?
Why did I put it in a VHS case?
What did playtesting teach me?
What went horribly wrong?
What historical rabbit hole did I fall into this week?
Those are the Marginalia.
Some of these articles will be useful. Some will be academic. Some will be practical. Some will probably be gloriously unnecessary.
That's the point.
The Marginalia is where I can write about the things that are incidental to the game, but interesting enough that I don't want them to disappear. If the newsletter is the story of what is happening now, and the changelog records what has changed, then the Marginalia is where I get to explore why.
The Marginalia isn’t meant to be read chronologically, from beginning to end. Start where you want and go from there. Let’s get weird.
Get ready to explore the margins.