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Joseph Ellis
United States
Columbus
Ohio
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Saturday I discussed how my game's theme of religions controlling people who are basically all the same grew out of wanting a game where piece control is determined situationally instead of by color or type.
I needed to come up with a system of how that might work. BGG user
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
pointed me to the abstract games Martian Chess and Gygès, which include this dynamic by focusing on space. You only move pieces in your area, or the ones closest to you.
I love games where maps and space and positioning are key, and so space was the factor I had also picked. I'd need some sort of anchor piece, that DOES arbitrarily belong to an individual, determined by color or shape, in order to distinguished who controls all the generic pieces.
Thematically, the easy choice was idols.
Idols were major pillars of ancient Near Eastern religions. Read the Hebrew scriptures and you will see the impossible struggle Israel's and Judah's religious leaders faced in trying to get rid of them. Worshiping the one true God, who has no image, meant getting rid of all idols, but for some reason people are just attracted to and influenced by idols. They felt they needed them. They felt they meant something.
The idea was, however loyal you were to the God of Israel, it can't hurt to have a couple extra idols around, just in case those gods can help you too, right? And so with those idols' presence comes that god's influence over you. The Hebrew scriptures argue that those gods aren't real yet even its authors know well and fight against the negative moral and religious influences the idols have.
Perfect for my game.
It would be by idols that control over villages and armies and resources would be determined. An idol nearby means you have control.
At this point, the mechanic was still fuzzy. At first I decided an idol should be able to control anything within two to three spaces of it. Later I moved onto masses of tiles bowing (literally) only to players who had idols on that mass of tiles somewhere. I'm still not sure if that's the right way to go but it's where I am for now. (I'll explain more about the first prototype tomorrow.)
At first I also came up with other items that would belong to specific players. Prophets could move around the board and build idols or place tiles. Temples were mighty structures that allowed the gods to enter earthly space and cause major destruction. Alters were player-specific spots required if you wanted to feed a god food and provide him/her with power. However, just recently I abolished all those ideas, in trying to keep the game simpler. (Look forward to a future post on the difficulty in keeping such a game simple!)
So at this point the game I described is still pretty vague. There are kingdoms, with armies and cities and farms and forests and more, and control of all that stuff is determined by who has an idols in the kingdom.
Tomorrow I'll get down to brass tax (what does that mean?) and describe my first playtesting session, which caused me to go back to the drawing board and start almost completely over.
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