Columbia Block Games Discussion

[Jerry Taylor]

I thought some of you might be interested in “getting inside my head” while I work through the development of my new War of the Roses game (title to be determined). I plan to periodically update you all on how things are going and what sort of issues I’m wrestling with in the design process. The idea is to allow you an opportunity for comment regarding where the game is heading and to give you some insight about why some aspects of the game are being designed the way they are.

An important caveat, however: One thing I’ve learned from designing Hammer of the Scots and Crusader Rex is that a game can and will almost certainly change radically upon playtesting. Ideas that sound great on paper often simply don’t work for unforeseen reasons once put into practice. New ideas constantly pop-up and major revisions are undertaken to improve this or that aspect of the game. Tweaks of all sorts are constantly going to be made. Designing is a lot of trail and error. So nothing I write below is written in stone. That’s one reason that designers and game companies rarely divulge much about how a product in development is going to look. They don’t really know themselves, and sneak peaks rarely reflect the final product very well.

Research
Job 1 is research. Towards that end, I have finished Charles Ross’ excellent The Wars of the Roses (Thames & Hudson, 1976) and am about done with John Wagner’s indispensable Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses (ABC-CLIO, 2001). In the queue is Bertram Wolffe’s Henry VI (Yale University Press, 2001), Charles Ross’ Edward IV (Yale University Press, 1998), and Charles Ross’ Richard III (Yale University Press, 1999). I suspect that I will need little else to design the game.

While I research the history, I am also thinking about how what I’m reading might be reflected in the game. So research and design are going on along parallel tracks. Of course, the latter process can’t begin until I think I’ve got a pretty fair grasp on the history of the conflict in general, and I believe I crossed that threshold a couple of weeks ago. Consequently, tentative design work has already begun.

Number of Players
The first thing that I have to settle is whether this is going to be a two-player game (Lancaster vs. York), a three-player game (Lancaster vs. York vs. Warwick), or a multi-player game in which players take the role of leading nobles ala Avalon Hill’s Kingmaker. I have settled on a two-player game for now.

A three-player game might still be an option within the basic two-player game, but the problem here is that a three player game in which only one player can win (as opposed to CG’s Napoleon, where two players work as a team to beat the other) invites one player to get chewed up at start by an alliance of the other two. The odd man out can be gone within 30 minutes and then will have to sit around (or go catch a TV show) while the other two slug it out. No one is going to be happy being that third player, so why invite someone to get victimized like that?

I could always design the game so that one is never really out of it, but that would be problematic. Lose all your heirs and, by God, you WERE out of it. Pretenders are a possibility, but if the Nevilles go down, would there really have been an opportunity for a Neville pretender to seize control of the King? Not bloody likely.

A multi-player game might be fun, but I rejected that idea quickly. First, there’s already a good multi-player game on this subject. It might be improved upon of course (the violence done to history in Kingmaker is often atrocious), but I’m not interested in producing a “new and improved” Kingmaker. Most players who’ve tried Kingmaker have liked it a lot, so it would be tough competition regardless. Second, I don’t buy the historical premise of a multi-player game that posits that the wars were really a series of struggles between grasping nobles and that the houses of Lancaster and York were mere pawns in those struggles. Feuds between nobles (like the great feud between Percy and Neville) certainly played a big role in the wars, but they weren’t ultimately the primary drivers of those wars.

Game System
The second thing I have to settle on is the game system I’m going to employ. There are three choices.

First, I can steal a page from Kingmaker and have one set of cards representing individuals, another set of cards representing titles and offices that would be allocated to those individuals at some player discretion, and another set of cards to represent events. Blocks would then represent individuals, but what those individuals bring to battle is determined by the titles and offices given to them (which are kept track of off the board but in full view of each player).

Second, I can take the Hammer of the Scots / Liberty / Crusader Rex system and modify it for my purposes.

Third, I can design a whole new system.

I am sorely tempted to go with a Kingmaker-style system. Mixing and matching nobles with titles can be great fun and is one of the things that made Kingmaker a great game. Moreover, the main decision the King had to make between uprisings was the allocation of patronage among his supporters and the extent to which he might wish to punish or reward his subjects. Decisions in this regard were hard, optimum policy was unclear, and there were costs and benefits associated with all conceivable allocative patterns. That, my friends, is the stuff that great games are made of.

Moreover, there were a lot of important politics there that dictated the course of events during the war, and politics were arguably even more important in the war than the military campaigns themselves. That also argues for a big role for patronage in the game.

But … adopting this system would necessitate the inclusion of about 100-150 cards for this purpose alone. Columbia Games informs me that, as far as their costs are concerned, a card is about as expensive to use as a block. So going this route would likely produce about 150-200 cards (remember the 25-50 event/movement cards) and 75-100 blocks. In short, the game would probably have to sell for something like $150 or more.

Another problem would be simple accounting. In Kingmaker, each player has only a few nobles, so managing noble assets and allocating and keeping track of titles and offices is pretty easy. In this game, players would have to allocate and keep track of dozens of titles for dozens of individuals at a time. I suspect that this would quickly become tedious and rather time consuming.

I suppose I could abridge the number of nobles and offices to keep the card and block counts down, but a lot would have to be sacrificed to get the card and block count down to reasonable levels. For instance, a $60 game would probably be limited to 50 blocks and 50 cards. If we assume that many nobles will be represented by two blocks (one Lancaster, one York), this means that the granularity of the game will be quite large; 25 titles and offices, 15-20 nobles, and a deck of 25 event cards. Give up too much flavor and you’ve got a missed opportunity for a game on this topic.

Moreover, players should not have an unlimited ability to mix and match titles and nobles. Their historical counterparts sure didn’t. A scaled-back Kingmaker system would accordingly provide far fewer interesting or varied choices in this regard than one would like. And if that’s the case, then how much is really gained as far as gameplay is concerned when you consider everything else you’re losing to produce a game along these lines?

So a Kingmaker-style mechanism is out (for now). What about my very own tried-and-true Hammer system? I see no reason why it wouldn’t work in this application. In fact, it would capitalize on the one thing about Hammer that seems to capture gamers’ imagination the most; the battle over control of nobles and the ability to “flip” them back-and-forth. The card deck would have to have more than the standard 5 events, however, to provide for the political aspects of the game that we won’t be able to deliver via a Kingmaker approach. Taking most of the patronage decisions out of the hands of the players can be remedied somewhat by creative events.

The risk, however, is that gamers might be getting tired of the Hammer system. There are already three games that employ the Hammer system with more (like CG’s Remember the Alamo) on the way. But the system is fun and gamers seem to agree on that. Response to all three products has been quite positive and little fussing is going as of yet about “the-same-old-same-old.” I think that’s because the modifications employed to make the system work well in different historical contexts really does produce very different and unique games that play quite differently from one another.

As long as that’s the case, there’s little risk that the game will seem tired and too similar to past games. How many games, after all, have used AH’s We the People card system? AH’s fundamental hex-counter-combat odds system? And how many gamers complain about that?

In sum, I don’t think there’s any reason to reinvent the wheel. If the Hammer system can’t be adopted to reasonably simulate the historical campaigns associated with the War of the Roses, then I won’t use it and will design a new system from scratch. But I think it can and thus I won’t (for now).

Moreover, there’s something to be said for allowing gamers an easy entry to the game. Most buyers will probably be familiar with Hammer, so the learning curve will be modest.

Units
The third thing I have to settle is the fundamental unit of the game. Will blocks represent the high peerage (Dukes, Marquis, and Earls), the high and low peerage (the aforementioned plus prominent lords), or troop type (infantry, archers, artillery, and knights)?

Both armies were rather similarly composed, and because tactical doctrines were identical on both sides, there simply wasn’t much interesting interplay between troop types. Armies were usually composed of the same percentage of archers, and battles started with a hail of arrows, which generally had little effect. The archers would then get out of the way and let the knights go at it – usually on foot. It was then a slugfest and generalship had little to do with it. Infantry mixed in with the knights.

Accordingly, giving players archers, knights, infantry, and artillery would not lead to interesting choices or different playing styles if the game were designed realistically. Nor would it readily allow me to group armies by noble house. So I dispensed with the possibility of having blocks represent troop type ala Hammer of the Scots.

Including the full English peerage is tempting simply because leaving out historically important actors like Lord Hastings, Lord Butler, Lord Bonville, Lord Clifford, Lord Fauconberg, Lord Egremont, and others would be a shame. But including those fellows in the mix would probably give us a 100-block game, and if possible, I’d like to keep the price of this game reasonable.

Happily, excluding those lords from the mix will do little violence to history. We can assume their presence within the blocks that represent the high peerage because they seldom commanded armies of consequence on their own. I’ll make an exception for those lords that were particularly important – like Lord Hastings and Lord Stanley.

But settling on the high peerage as the fundamental unit of the game doesn’t finalize matters. Are blocks going to represent individuals, families, or titles? That is;

* Should the game provide a block for Jasper Tudor who was, at various times, Earl of Pembroke, Duke of Bedford, and then none of the above; or

* a block for the Earl of Pembroke, which may or may not represent Jasper Tudor depending upon who controls the unit, or

* a block for the House of Tudor, which may represent Jasper Tudor, his brother Edmund Tudor the Earl of Richmond, and his nephew Henry Tudor, who inherited the title Earl of Richmond and later became Henry VII?

Providing one block per significant person would inflate my block count beyond 100. And then there’s the fact that there were a lot of nobles with the same name (for instance, more than a half-dozen Richard and Edward Plantagenets) that would be a pain in the butt to keep track of.

Providing one block per house, on the other hand, would blur many distinctions between nobles and not prove particularly realistic. For instance, during Edward IV’s reign, how would we account for the fact that George Plantagenet – the Earl of Clarence and King Edward’s brother – went rebel while Edward’s other brother, Richard Plantagenet – the Earl of Gloucester and later, Richard III – stayed loyal to the King?

Accordingly, blocks will represent titles such as the Duke of This, the Marquis of That, and the Earl of the Other – just like in Hammer of the Scots. Who exactly holds those titles will depend upon who owns the block, and the game for the most part won’t specify (although the notes within the game will for the historically curious).

Time & Scope
The fourth thing I have to settle is whether the game will simulate the struggle between Lancaster and York from beginning to end (1455-1485 or even a bit longer) or whether it focus on one of the major episodes of that struggle.

For instance, a game might focus on (i) the struggle for control of Henry VI (in which case, we might call the game Henry VI), (ii) the various challenges to the rule of Edward IV (in which case, we might call the game Edward IV), or (iii) the challenges to the rule of Richard III and later, Henry VII (in which case I’d probably call the game something like Richard III). That would actually allow me to publish three separate games, a real nice thing if the system works well and the first game goes over well. It would also allow the games to more-or-less reflect Shakespeare’s famous four-part series of plays on the war.

Alternatively, the game might provide for a scenario for each of the above with each scenario playable in 2-3 hours and a grand campaign game to slug it all out if the players want a big-time challenge.

Well, I want a game that is playable in less than four hours, and I think gamers – if they had their druthers – would prefer to settle it all during that time rather than to settle only one piece of it. Moreover, it’s not clear that there’s enough military and political action at the scale we’re talking about to make a really compelling two-hour game out of these partial episodes of the war – at least, if we’re going to package them all together.

If we sidestep that problem and publish three seperate games on the war, it would mean that games two and three really would be an awful lot like game one. Would gamers fork over another $120 or so to have two more games that played exactly like the one already on their shelf? I doubt it. So if we’re going to produce only one game on this topic, we can’t help but disappoint if we arbitrarily pick one episode out of three equally compelling episodes for our design.

Accordingly, I’ll shoot for a 2-4 hour game that takes us from beginning (the Duke of York’s campaign to seize control of King Henry VI in 1455) to the end (fighting until the last significant heir of one of the houses is dead).

Kings & Things
The fifth thing I need to settle is how we’re going to represent the potential Kings. Often time, heirs lost their titles and lands, so we can’t assume that the Earl of Richmond, for instance, necessarily represents Henry Tudor. Ideally, we would like some way to represent these individuals that is distinct from blocks that represent dukedoms and earldoms.

But we can’t go hog wild here. There were dozens of individuals with a reasonable claim to the throne – far more than actually lived to play out that claim. On the Yorkist side alone, we have the three major historical claimants (Richard of York, his eldest son Edward IV, and his youngest son Richard III) plus “could have beens” such as

* George Plantagenet, another son of Richard of York and Duke of Clarence;

* Edmund Plantagenet, the Earl of Rutland, another of Richard of York’s sons who just so happened to die in battle with his father;

* Edward IV’s sons Richard and Edward Plantagenet, famously executed by Richard III in the Tower of London;

* George Plantagenet’s son Edward Plantagenet, who became Earl of Warwick after Richard Neville’s death and was subsequently imprisoned by Henry VII;

* Richard III’s sons Edward Plantagenet and his bastard son John; and finally,

* Henry Stafford (Duke of Buckingham), John de la Pole (Earl of Lincoln), plus a couple of pretenders who attracted enough support to have a plausible chance to hold the throne if they had prevailed in battle against Henry VII.

To keep this mess manageable, we’re simply going to have to assume that blocks represent claimants whenever possible. If the Lancaster player has the Earl of Richmond in play after a certain time (he was born, after all, in 1457, so he can’t personally be in play during the early part of the game), that’s Henry Tudor. If, after a certain time, the Lancaster Earl of Richmond dies in battle or is executed during a political turn, that’s the end of Henry Tudor.

Keeping track of this could be a nightmare. Accordingly, I’m inclined to use special cards to represent the major heirs to the throne, with all the pertinent info on those cards to allow players to know who’s in play when. If an heir dies, his card is removed. The cards will be numbered so players can keep track of who’s next in line for the throne.

Even so, we can’t provide cards for every potential claimant unless we want to run the risk of overwhelming players and/or blowing the price of the game through the roof. Moreover, the more claimants we have in the game, the longer the game threatens to go.

For all of those reasons, I’ve tentatively decided on seven potential kings per side. The House of Lancaster gets: Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou (who represents the guardianship of Henry’s son, Edward of Lancaster), Edward of Lancaster, Edmund Beaufort (1st Duke of Somerset), Edmund Beaufort (2nd Duke of Somerset), Henry Beaufort (3rd Duke of Somerset), and Henry Tudor (Earl of Richmond) … in exactly that line of succession.

The House of York gets Richard Plantagenet (Duke of York), Edward Plantagenet (Edward IV), Edmund Plantagenet (Earl of Rutland), George Plantagenet (Duke of Clarence), Richard Plantagenet (Richard III), Henry Stafford (Duke of Buckingham), and John de la Pole (Earl of Lincoln) … in exactly that line of succession.

We’ll have to assume that the sons thereof that don’t have cards either die in battle or get murdered by other claimants … which is exactly what happened historically with only a couple of exceptions. You’re in the game as long as you have King cards. Once they’re all gone, it’s game over. The object of the game is to kill the other guy’s claimants (cards).

Using cards to represent Kings allows me to add a bit of color and historical pageantry to the game. It also allows me to employ only one “King” block per side. The card will tell players what kind of firepower each of these Kings brings to battle when they are holding the throne. For reasons I’ll discuss in a subsequent design diary entry, a noble’s marshal prowess had a heavy impact on the combat ability of that noble’s army, so a tremendous fighter like Edward IV will have a much more effective “King” block than, say, Henry VI (perhaps the worst soldier ever to pick up a sword).

Noble Comings and Goings
The sixth thing I need to settle is how to manage the constant reshuffling and recreation of titles and offices. Dukedoms and Earldoms came and went during the war. Titles were frequently retired and new ones created out of the estates of dismantled feudal holdings. Hardwiring many (but not all) of the patronage decisions for each side means we need some mechanism to allow blocks to come and go as the war drags on.

The easiest way to handle this is to tie the reshuffling of titles to regime changes. One a new King takes the throne, he will have an option to eliminate some Dukedoms and Earldoms and replace them with a set roster of alternative Dukedoms and Earldoms. Historically, Kings would dismantle the holdings of their enemies and redistribute them to his allies. There was a cost associated with this, however, in that those disinherited (if they had managed to flee abroad or escape the executioner’s axe) became bitter and permanent enemies of the regime. Accordingly, we’ll provide the option for Kings to “settle scores” but won’t force them to do so. For the choice to be meaningful, a significant downside to this will have to be instituted in the rules.

The existence of King cards allows me to easily present these options to players without undue bookkeeping or rules. The card for Edward Plantagenet (Edward IV) for instance, will stipulate that, once Edward IV assumes the throne and puts down resistance for a year, he may deploy the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, the Marquis of Montagu, the Earl of Essex, and the Lord of Hastings during the subsequent political turn. If he wishes to do so, however, he will have to remove from the game two Dukes and an Earl (if he wished to deploy all four; but perhaps he only wishes to deploy one or two of those blocks, in which case he would be forced to remove fewer blocks. The Lord block, however, is deployed for free). Blocks removed to make way for new blocks are not permanently gone – they might come back once a Lancaster King knocks Edward IV off the throne, in which case the process works in reverse.

To continue our example, however, Edward IV also created titles for his wife’s family (the notorious Woodvilles), but this didn’t happen immediately, so those deployments would be an option at some later point in the game. But we won’t make Edward do this. We also have to keep in mind that – for all we know – Edward will never make it to the throne and another Plantagenet – say, his brother George – will end up enjoying the long reign that his brother had. Why not let any King opt for a Woodville marriage is they want one? That’s an interesting possibility that might well add to game play. So one rule might be that, beyond a certain point in the game, any King may deploy the Earl of Rivers, for instance, in lieu of another Earl on the board. Doing so, however, might trigger loyalty rolls for existing nobles.

While a nice idea in theory, this all threatens to get rather complicated and fiddly. A major challenge will to keep all of this simple enough for players to manage. Accordingly, I’ve got to be careful here.

Tentative Block & Card Manifest
Based on the above, I have tentatively drawn up a roster of 61 blocks for the game. They include a King (one for each side), Margaret of Anjou (Lancaster only), the Duke of Buckingham (one for each side), the Duke of Clarence (York only), the Duke of Exeter (one for each side), the Duke of Gloucester (York only), the Duke of Norfolk (one for each side), the Duke of Somerset (Lancaster only), the Duke of Suffolk (one for each side), the Duke of York (York only), the Marquis of Montagu (one for each side), the Earl of Devon (one for each side), the Earl of Essex (one for each side), the Earl of Kent (one for each side), the Earl of Lincoln (York only), the Earl of March (York only), the Earl of Northumberland (one for each side), the Earl of Oxford (Lancaster only), the Earl of Pembroke (one for each side), the Earl of Richmond (Lancaster only), the Earl of Rivers (one for each side), the Earl of Rutland (York only), the Earl of Salisbury (one for each side), the Earl of Surrey (one for each side), the Earl of Warwick (one for each side), the Earl of Wiltshire (one for each side), Lord Hastings (York only), and Lord Stanley (one for each side). I’ll also have a block for the standing army of Calais (one for each side) and blocks for rebels (tentatively, four for each side) and mercenaries (tentatively, three for each side).

I’m hoping that 50 cards will suffice; 14 “King” cards and 36 event / movement cards. The cards will work more or less like those in Hammer and Crusader Rex save for the fact that (i) most of the event cards will also allow movement (no forced choice, however, between the event and movement), (ii) at least a third of the cards will have events attached to them, and (iii) some can be used during an enemy’s turn, in which case the player gets to replace the card with draw from the deck after the card is played.

Important Mechanical Challenges
There are several aspects of the War that will require me to modify the basic Hammer system. The two most interesting issues are discussed below.

The Wars of the Roses raged intermittently for over 30 years. But if I want a 2-4 hour game, we can’t have 1 Turn = 1 Year. Often, many years would pass between challenges to the throne. Some ability to compress time between uprisings is thus essential.

My idea is to abstract time and not explicitly keep track of it. Each Turn will represent a year in which a military challenge to the throne is launched. At the end of the year, the challenge will either succeed or it won’t – in which case, the challengers will either be dead or, if not, forced into exile. After the exhaustion of cards (which will represent the passage of the year), a political phase will follow in which the King has the option of deploying blocks as directed on his card or, perhaps, executing heirs that are under this control. Blocks are then returned to their seat and strengthened a bit to reflect replacement of losses, cards are reshuffled, and another Turn begins.

Turns will either go on until all heirs in a House are dead or until x number of Turns pass, in which case we’ll assume national exhaustion and whoever controls the throne at that time is the winner. Heirs will come of age, marriages will be consummated, and Kings will run the risk of dying of natural causes based on how many Turns have passed.

OK, we could roll dice to see how many years have passed between challenges, but that’s a rather fiddly matter to keep track of and is not all that necessary unless one is hell-bent on narrating the war on a year-by-year basis. I’m disinclined to add that to the game because it’s more annoyance than it’s worth.

The second challenge has to do with the death of nobles. Often times, once a noble died in battle, the battle simply ended in defeat for that noble’s army no matter what the relative strength of the various armies might be at the time our buddy fell. Nobles died often in battle during the War of the Roses, but sometimes, they fled and managed to find their way to safety abroad. And since nobles – including Kings – were almost always swinging swords in the thick of things just like the rest of their troops, one can’t really say that the larger his army is, the less likely it is that he’ll bite the dust. That wasn’t the way it worked.

In previous games, the same dynamic existed, but Kings and prominent nobles rarely ended up dying in battles during the Scottish Wars of Independence or during the 3rd Crusade, so I could safely ignore the problem. I can’t really ignore it in this case because it frequently was a decisive factor in the way the War of the Roses played out. A ton of quite involved rules can be imagined to handle this, but I don’t like a ton of involved rules. An elegant solution must be found.

A related combat problem is that defenders had zero advantage in battles during the War of the Roses. This is an easier matter to handle – dice rolling during battle should be simultaneous.

I’ll have more to say about these issues, the event cards, and many other more specific aspects of gameplay in my next diary post.

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Designer, Hammer of the Scots & Crusader Rex

[MGibster]

This is why I don't design games. I thought about making a pirate game but decided I'd have a lot more fun by purchasing a paper pirate hat, a fake parrot that sits on my shoulder, and using a stick in lieu of a cutlass I began chasing the neighborhood kids screaming "Arrrrrr" and "Shiver me timbers".

I can't say the War of the Roses ever held much fascination for me but neither did the Scottish war for independence and I love Hammer of the Scots. It's nice to see how much thought goes into making a game and how many different factors you have to account for including the cost of the final product. I look forward to seeing more about the process in the future.

Marc

[rcube]

Thanks for the incredible post Jerry. I'm going to reread it now....

Personally I'd recommend aiming for something different in terms of gaming mechanics, than your current hits (HotS, and CR). It is the "differences" that make me love RitD, and the upcoming Ron Draker game. Frederick's war... now that looks VERY different (= interesting).

[Laurie Gordon]

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for that fascinating read. I for one am very excited that you will be designing a game on the War of the Roses. Hammer and CRex are both among my top-ten favorite games, and I'd love to see a similar treatment on this subject. I think everything you decided makes a lot of sense, but would I be a true wargamer if I didn't have one or two suggestions?

1. To keep track of claimants to the throne, might it be cheaper than cards to have a card play-aid for both factions showing who their current claiments are? Or it could even be printed in some unused part of the map board. A few cardboard markers could be used to track who was currently in the running.

2. I like the idea of the interval between turns representing a varying amount of time. The defeated contender needs time to rebuild his forces and forge polical alliances. He may also be waiting for an heir to come of age, or the current king to become old and feeble. So what I suggest is that after each turn the player who is not holding the crown gets to decide how many years will pass before he revolts and another turn is played.

With each passing year between turns both sides can add one pip to each block. Also after the new hand is dealt in year one, with each passing year both players can trade in one card and draw another. Or perhaps even play an event card, and draw another, if there are events that make sense when not campaigning. Hiers may come of age (or perhaps pass away from old age - I'm not sure if any lived long enough for that in this conflict). When the contender finally feels the moment is ripe then he declares the start of a new turn.

To make sure the contender doesn't wait forever and strike only in the last year of the game (like stalling to getting the last shot in basketball) a victory point could be awarded for every year the kingship is held. These points plus bonus VPs for holding the kingship at the end of the game would determine the winner, so there would be a real incentive to challenge for the crown as soon as one felt strong enough to make the attempt. It would make for a nice game narative, and definately give this game a different flavour from HotS and CRex with their back-to-back turns.

Laurie
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Toronto Area Boardgaming Society - www.tabsonline.net

[BrooklynCrew]

Thanks for the window on the process Jerry... that was a great read. I'll likely be lining up for this one... but after Hammer and CRex I'm an unabashed fan

[bigcheese]

Wow, this is very exciting: game designer's blog meets open source gaming. I have started to read "The Wars of the Roses: A Concise History" so when finished at least I will be in a position to comment on the evolving design from a historical perspective. I like your focus on the 3-way balance between complexity, cost and historical accuracy: I'm sure it would be easier to capture every detail of the game but the player would have less time to make the decisions which make such a game engaging. Given sufficient game flavour – the map, blocks, cards and historical notes; all things we have come to expect from CG games – it will be easy for a player to use their imagination and connect the decisions he is making in a well designed abstraction with events that could have happened.

You caution that the design will likely change during play testing. I hope you have the time and energy to post the significant outcomes and resulting rules/component changes. I also look forward to the next diary post.
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Matthew

[bigcheese]

One important element of the game that has not been mentioned, perhaps because you have given so much detail on everything else, is the board. I assume it will be a map of England, Wales, Scottish Borders, maybe Calais and Ireland (can it be mounted ... please). What significance will distance, cities and castles have. Will there be the opportunity for sieges like CR? Will it be point-to-point like CR or area control like HotS?
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Matthew

[Jerry DeMoss]

Never having designed any games for sale (only sports type games for my own amusement when younger), I hadn't realized how much the trade-offs of cost and size vs. historical representation really affected the design of the game. After reading your 1st post in this folder, I'm ready to avidly follow this discussion and, when the game is ready, to preorder two.
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A wargamer since the AH games of the 1970's with rekindled interest in the last several years.

[Yorkist Joe]

Hi Jerry:

Here are my thoughts on your work thus far. Good luck and keep the diary entries coming!

1. Research: You certainly have enough to inform your game design. I would also recommend the following books:

- Anthony Goodman, The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452-97

- John Gillingham, The Wars of the Roses: Peace and Conflict in Fifteenth-Century England

2. Number of players: I concur with two. There were always two “sides,” what changed was who was on which side – sometimes during the battle itself!

3. Game system: Will you use offices? I don’t think the game would suffer if you didn’t. But if you’re interested, I have a list of important offices I could provide. You also should make sure that foreign assistance plays an important role in the game. On numerous occasions, foreign cash, troops, fleets, etc. helped make a campaign possible. Examples include the “French” troops under Pierre de Brezé who fought for Margaret of Anjou, especially in the North; Henry Tudor’s invasion force in 1485 would have been nothing without the assistance from French King Louis XI (in fact, Louis “the Spider” was just trying to harass Richard III, I doubt he expected Tudor to gain the throne!); Pretender Lambert Simnel’s army that came to grief at Stoke Field in 1487 was primarily Germans and Irish; Lord Hastings received an annual payment from Louis XI; etc.

4. Units: I agree that you could avoid troop types, but could there be a card that provides some type of tactical advantage? Historical examples include one side’s lack of archers at Edgecote and Stoke; the snowstorm at Towton; the fog at Barnet; the timely cavalry intervention at Tewkesbury; etc. Regarding the nobles you should include, I’ve developed the following hierarchy from several sources, ranging from greatest annual income to least. I’ve been tinkering with Kingmaker, you see. Tiptoft might be unfamiliar: he was Earl of Worcester under Edward IV. The list assumes that Edward, Earl of March, has succeeded to his deceased father’s Dukedom of York and that Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, has succeeded to his deceased father’s earldom of Salisbury. I play my Kingmaker games assuming that it’s 1460, post Battle of Wakefield. Starting the game in 1455, with Richard, Duke of York, and Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, still alive, would still leave the Duke of York and Earl of Warwick in the top 3.

Duke of York 8300
Duke of Lancaster 8000
Earl of Warwick 6780
Stafford 5058
Mowbray 3408
Arundel 2392
Percy 2200
Talbot 2106
De la Pole 2084
Courtenay 1785
Tiptoft 1747
Grey of Ruthin 1260
Beaufort 1250
Lovell 1250
Stanley 1200
Hungerford 1013
de Vere 938
Jasper Tudor 925
Beaumont 916
Greystoke 812
Scrope 696
Holland 500
Audley 498
Dacre 400
Clifford 312
Bourchier 300
Hastings 300
Herbert 300
Howard 300
Roos 160

Whatever you do, please don’t omit de Vere. Kingmaker does, and de Vere played a significant role! Some of the lesser nobles on the list above played critical roles and achieved great prominence. You mention Hastings, and I would also include Bourchier (Earl of Essex), Herbert (Earl of Pembroke), and Howard (Duke of Norfolk).

5. Kings & Things: I would vote against including Margaret of Anjou as an heir. While she provided the necessary backbone that her husband lacked, she proved to be of no account once her son and the true Lancastrian heir, Edward Prince of Wales, was killed at Tewkesbury. Assume that wherever Edward is, there Margaret is also. This would free up a space for Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter. He was descended from Henry IV’s younger daughter Elizabeth, he and the Beauforts were Henry VI’s closest male relatives, and he felt he had a better claim to Protectorship than Richard, Duke of York. The Duke of Exeter should be first in line of Lancastrian precedence after Edward, Prince of Wales, in other words, ahead of the Beauforts. On the Yorkist side, including the Earl of Lincoln as an heir could be problematic. John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln was the eldest son of John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk and Elizabeth of York (daughter of Richard, Duke of York and Cecily Neville). In game terms, would you just assume that he was born? Should he just be considered part of the Duke of Suffolk block? To complicate matters further, I think the Bourchiers had a decent, albeit weak, claim to the succession on the Yorkist side. I’d have to research that more. But you’re right, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham should follow Richard III in precedence for York.

6. Noble Comings and Goings: There should be a mechanism to force the King to deal with revolts on the periphery, drawing him away from London.

7. Tentative Block & Card Manifest: Earl of Surrey would be a wasted block. The period earl became Duke of Norfolk. If I’m not mistaken, the earldom traditionally goes to the heir of the Duke of Norfolk. Also, the Calais army should be very strong, as it was the largest source of “professional” troops in crown service, and it should be reluctant to fight the King.

Random thoughts:

Will there be a mechanism for attainder? The reigning King should be able to strip his rivals of possessions, titles, etc.

Control of London should be one of the key objectives of the game. Without control of London, the player would not have control of the government.

Will weather play a role? Examples include flooded rivers blocking movement, Barnet fog, storms at sea, etc.

Pretenders should be included. Imagine the outcome if Henry VII had lost at Stoke!

Will there be a “Vacillating Noble” mechanism, à la the Kingmaker variant card?

This could be too “fiddly,” but nobles should be able to increase their strength if they’re near their home areas.

Finally, one should be careful about noble strength. A greater lord might not necessarily have more men on the battlefield than a lesser lord. A lot would depend on the location of the battle relative to home areas, time available to recruit, etc. I’m not sure how you could reflect that, but it’s an important consideration. An important example is Edward IV returning from exile with a handful of followers. His force was greatly increased by the arrival of Lord Hastings and his retainers, about 3,000 I think. I see a rule already: if a king flees the country, he reverts to lowest strength until he can recruit back up?
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Yorkist since 1986

[pfglenn]

I love this design diary. Thanks. I have to take issue, though, with your assertion that Richard III offed his nephews. From my understanding, there's not a whole lot of evidence implicating anyone. During Richard's life, he wasn't regarded as a murder, and even continued to socialize with the mother and sisters of the princes in the tower.

A number of historians think the princes were killed by Henry VII after he took the throne--he had a substantially stronger motive than Richard to kill them. Henry made a regular practice of killing anyone who had a claim to the throne, at least in part because his own claim was weak, so it'd be in character for him to kill the princes. Others think it was Buckingham who did it (1) to implicate Richard and (3) to eliminate Yorkists heirs.

An interesting fact: the bill of retainder that condemned Richard--passed by parliament *after* Richard was already dead--makes no mention whatsoever of the murder of his nephews. Given that the accused was dead and disgraced, the bill could have said he was an alien and still been passed. So why weren't the murders mentioned? Maybe because Richard didn't do it.

It's certainly possible that Richard killed them, but I think there's a hell of a lot fo doubt. Based on motive alone, Richard is unlikely to have done it because the princes had already been declared illegitimate and thus had no claim on the throne. Henry very much needed the princes to be legitimate because he bolstered his own legitimacy by marrying their sister.

I think I've rambled on for too long already, so I'll stop now.

[Yorkist Joe]

Most professional historians hold Richard III responsible, all members of the Richard III Society hold anybody but Richard responsible.

At any rate, he usurped the throne, princes dead or alive...
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Yorkist since 1986

[pfglenn]

Well, he didn't usurp the throne if his nephews were illegitimate. And given Ned's, um, affection for women, it's possible.

[The Black Prussian]

I agree with Joe about Exeter. His claim was better than the Beauforts, and has been unjustly overlooked by historians.
One character you might consider is Margaret Beaufort. It was marriage to her that gave the Tudors their wafer thin claim. The marriage was about 1455, so it's possible to treat her as an unmarried heiress at the start.
In my Advanced Kingmaker when nobles die they have to make an "heir roll"; usually they will manage to father an heir who continues the line (but loses offices etc.) Sometimes however a noble will have fathered only daughters, so the estates must be partitioned amongst them and suitable husbands found.
Margaret starts as an unmarried sole heiress with a claim to the throne, so has no shortage of suitors. By this means any character in the game can end up as King (or at least the father of a King).
Heiresses are distributed in Parliament as the King would often award nobles the "Wardship and Marriage" of an heiress as a form of patronage.