The Making of Opera I

By Hans van Tol
October 12, 2009

Designer: Hans van Tol
Publisher: The Game Master

Players: 2-4
Ages: 12+
Playing time: 90-150 minutes
Release date: October 2009
Languages: English, German and Dutch
Price: €40
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December 2005 was the first time I had ever thought that making a game with a musical theme and composers might be interesting. The trigger was an article that caught my eye when I was reading the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, an article about a theater play on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Ever since seeing the movie Amadeus during high school – in the early 1980s; yes, I have passed 40 – I was fascinated by Mozart’s life, his obsessive way of creating music, and the way he created his own world with music and by writing several operas, operas which were greatly enjoyed by both the ordinary people and the rulers of Europe, although they had difficulty admitting it.

I tore out the article and put it on a board where I collected several thoughts and ideas. They wandered around in my brain, never really touching the floor, for about six months. Since starting to design games, I’ve called this period the “brain massage,” the period in which the theme and the mechanics are slowly evolving and maturing to a structure with hands and feet.

The massage ended in the summer of 2006, when I was walking around in the sun with a colleague during a long lunch break. Suddenly, I cannot remember why, I got this idea for a game in which the players would build their own imperium of theatres throughout Europe. Great theatres would appear in Paris, London, Vienna, Amsterdam, Rome, etc. (At that time, I had not done any research, so how could I know exactly which cities were important, not to mention which time periods?) I decided to call the game Opera because in my opinion this is the highest art form in music, bringing together everything: music, ballet and drama…

A few weeks later I made the first prototype of the game, which included a map of Europe, and originally 13(!) cities were selected in which performances could be held. At that time the game was quite fresh and immature with only quantity being an issue in the game. Specifically, in the first set-up of the game rules, it was important to make money from performances; some cities were bigger than others and could attract – potentially – more audience than others.

At that time Venice and Paris were the largest cities with the most audience potential, up to a maximum of 5. Vienna, Moskow, Rome and Amsterdam were the second largest cities (maximum 4), and seven other cities were smaller, with a maximum of 3. In the picture below you can see the original set up.

Elements of Opera which were in this prototype of more than three years ago: the map of Europe, five of the six final cities, the Baroque (Barok) and Classical (Klassiek) episode, and the number of halls being between 3 and 5 per city.

Next up: The “family version” of Opera…

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