Author’s Note: This is actually one of the oldest topical essays we have on the subject of the game itself, and the thinking and theories that have gone into her creation. I think that the spirit of this document is very much a part of what we’ve got so far, even though the systems are not (yet) as robust as we’d like them to be – ie – it will surely not, at this point, take you months before you see a duplicate event. Nonetheless, there’s some good material here, I think, in addition to containing an abbreviated history of how the project was born.
-V.

Many, if not most of those who have been keeping up with our progress know the story of our beginnings, and for those who don’t, I’ll recap here briefly.

The long and short of it goes like this: Once upon a time, there was a thread in the Civ3 fora all about “who you’d like to see” working together to produce Civ4, and the usual suspects immediately floated to the surface. Sid and Brian topped the list, with other notable designers being added to the chorus. It was a regular “who’s who” of game designers of renown, and that was as it should be.

What pleasantly surprised me then, was to see my name on that list. To be mentioned with the giants who made me fall in love with gaming in the first place…that was a fine day, let me tell you!

But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was just that. A dream. There was no way these hallowed Titans would ever let me NEAR their stuff, not even a side project, much less the greatest turn based game of them all. Just wasn’t gonna happen.

And frankly, that ticked me off! I’ve been designing games for years, and I believe I’m a pretty fair hand at it. Not computer games, it’s true, but the principles of design are generally the same, or at the very least, highly similar.

So that got me thinking, and as often happens when I get myself worked up into a lather about something, I spoke before I really thought it though, and said something to the effect that I’d just go off and make my own damned game then.

Me.

The guy who knows ZIP about art, and even less about programming.

I made that post and went to bed.

Got up the next morning and realized just what I had gotten myself into, and logged back on to ‘poly to delete my post, hoping that nobody had seen it.

What I found when I arrived at ‘poly though, was….a miraculous rescue.

True, *I* didn’t know beans about coding or art or any of the other gazillion things I’d need to make a game fly, but suddenly there were LOTS of people coming out of the woodwork offering their time and talents to make the game I proposed a reality.

That’s when it hit me that we could really DO this thing!

Trouble was…I said it before I even had an idea in my head what the game might be.

So…given that I had lots of people riding to my rescue, I decided that I’d better get busy, so I turned my attention to the one thing I DID know a lot about, and that was telling good, compelling stories.

That, I know how to do, and it struck me that THAT would be my single biggest contribution to the effort. I could build us the game world with words, and if those words were vivid enough, then perhaps those who knew about art and coding and sound could take those words and breathe a different sort of life into them.

And so….here we are.

Now, for those of you who know me, this won’t come as any great shock, but I got my own ideas about how to do things, and sometimes, those ideas are a bit off the beaten path.

That can be both a blessing and a curse, cos the sheer unorthodoxy can sometimes cause people to question even the most basic underlying assumptions, which can lead to lots of ultimately needless questioning. And, there have been times, its true, when that unorthodoxy has bitten me in the arse. So there are downsides.

On the other hand, you don’t ever take anything to the next level by simply plodding along predictable paths. If you want to make something that really stands out from the crowd, then you have to take a path that’s different from the rest, and that’s what we did, and continue to do, and there will be ample evidence of that in journal entries to follow.

Basic Design Decisions

Five is a beautiful number.

Some might argue that it’s the PERFECT number, in terms of game dynamics. Seven…too many. Good, but a bit cumbersome for my tastes, and too ambitious for a first try. Three….not enough…but five…ohhhh, now that’s magical!

So right off the bat, I knew I wanted to have five…somethings in the game. I didn’t even have a design yet, but by God, I knew there were gonna be five playable groups in whateveritturnedouttobe.

Fantasy.

I love fantasy, so that’s where my brain just naturally turned to when searching for a game.

Okay, check. We got five, and we got fantasy. Good start.

So what else?

Well, fantasy…that’s good, how about some stresses then. Diametric pulls. Church and Magic. That’s a good one. Knights and Outlaws. Yep…that’s another good one, and sort of a “muscle and steel” parallel to the priests and wizards. Good deal.

Civ-Style, which means 4x and turn based. Check.

I also knew that whatever world we played in, it wasn’t gonna be some warmed over rendition of someone else’s work. I tell stories. I make worlds up with words. That’s what I do, and our game deserved a world all it’s own, so I set about making one.

All original. No borrowed creatures and critters for us. No sir.

So I started writing. “Flight and Founding.” “The Story Weaver.” “The Remarkable Life of Jacob Dunn.” And from those stories, the world began to take shape. They are, in a real sense, our history, and that history was enhanced as other talented writers began pouring themselves into the emerging world. Now it was no longer one voice, but a chorus. There was a guiding voice, yes, but a tapestry was being woven together, and from this tapestry, the mechanics that drive the game world was being derived.

If that sounds a bit backwards from the norm, it is. Generally, the design experience revolves around establishing the game mechanics and then making a story up to fit in and around them.

Not so here.

We created the world first, and the world itself has been informing us of the mechanics needed to adequately display it on your computer screen.

In other words, the world is teaching US, and that difference in approach will be telling, I think.

One of the goals I had in mind for the game at the outset was to create a living, breathing dynamic world in which players could become active participants in….to help write the next chapter in the history of the Kingdom of Candle’Bre.

To that end, this is very definitely NOT a “God Game” in the same way that many other 4x games are.

The turns are doled out month to month, meaning that it would be rare indeed for a game set in a world with but sixty provinces to extend beyond the lifespan of a single ruler of the period.

And, you, as the player, are certainly not all powerful. You have to answer to a lot of different voices. Your people, your nobles, the Church, and sometimes, the Fates themselves. True, you have vast, far-reaching powers as player, but make no mistake about it. God, you’re not.

Another goal from early on: LOTS of in-game tensions and dynamics. The struggle between Church and Wizards (in game, this became Influence and Magic), the tension between noble knights and ruthless outlaws (in game, this became Honor and Infamy), and all the subtle variations that brings with it.

Add to that five playable factions, each with unique strengths and weaknesses, and put all that into a living, breathing world, and you get a dizzying array of choices.

Choice.

That’s another big thing that hit me right off the bat. It was my goal, at the outset, to create a game where there was no way, aside from blatant milking the game, that you could do everything in a single sitting.

It will take literally months (or longer!), of playing repeated games to see all the Fate Cards, to research every tech in every tree, and to try out all the different paths to victory, and that is as it should be. That’s the way it would be in a real, living, vibrant world.

I wanted to create a system where you simply had so much stuff to do, so many possible things to spend your resources on, that there was no way you could do it all in a single time playing through.

To help with that, we established early on that provinces (which are the building blocks of the game) could only “hold” a limited number of buildings, and then of course, I went on to make many more buildings than that limit. So right there, you’re hit with tough decisions. What do you need? A temple to curry favor with the Church, or a Tavern, from which to recruit spies.

On top of that, I’ve added in building dynamics, such that if you build one thing in a given province, certain other things are excluded (ie – can’t build a Focusing Sigil, which increases magic, in any province containing a religious building).

More choices. How do you want to play the game? That will inform you of the types of buildings you should gravitate to.

So provinces aren’t “cookie cutter.” You simply can’t build every building in every province. It doesn’t work that way. Provincial improvements are powerful, and strengthen your playing style and strategy for the current game, but to get the most out of your strategy, it requires thought and careful planning. Tradeoffs and sacrifice. What can you do without, in order to further your chosen strategy?

And of course, there are mechanisms in-game to shift gears. As you add more provinces to your realm, you can change your build focus. You can rip down old buildings and replace them with something else if your current strategy isn’t working.

But of course, that takes time, your most precious commodity.

In game choices should MATTER. You might not be God, but your choices made in-game should heavily influence the way the current game plays out, and this is done in a variety of ways. Most obvious to the eye is the exclusionary nature of building patterns inside provinces. If you build a temple here, then you can no longer build a tavern, which means you have CHOSEN influence with the Church over espionage, at least in the short run. So be it, now make the most of your decision!

Another way this can be seen is in the Acts of Fate (which will be covered all on their own in some future installment). Some of these are “always on” and can always appear, and others have no chance of appearing unless decisions YOU make for your chosen faction bring them into being (ie – building X number of markets and banks triggers an event pool called “Fiscal Events” that cannot occur in-game unless you meet the pre-requisites). In these and other ways then, your decisions heavily color and influence the WAY the game plays out. It’s flavor. It’s character and texture. Your decisions drive that.

Likewise, with honor and infamy. Behave honorably and it opens up whole new vistas of opportunity for you. Likewise, behave in dastardly fashion, and you will not only see the world around you growing darker, but we’ve even been toying with subtly changing the color and texture of the interface itself as you continue down the “dark path” to reflect your increasingly evil nature, and as with the honorable side of the coin, infamy has its own powers and rewards.

Combinatronics.

I’m not even sure if it’s a real word, but it’s the one I use to describe what we’re doing.

Candle’Bre is an onion. There are layers upon layers here, and as you peel them away to discover the treasures beneath, it only leads to yet more layers and new things to discover. True, we will only scratch the surface of this thought in order to bring the game to life, but that’s the real magic of the system. Once we GET a playable game out, we’ll be looking to YOU, players and hopefully complete Candle’Bre addicts, to tell us how to mold the game from that point.

So, that’s the path we’re on, and the thinking that went into getting us there.

-=Vel=-

Tagged with:

Filed under: Design Diaries

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!