Ignacy Trzewiczek: Game Designer’s Journal #2 – Through the Eyes of My Soul

[Editor’s note: Portal Publishing’s Ignacy Trzewiczek, co-designer of the 2008 title Witchcraft, has been penning a weekly “game designer’s journal” for Games Fanatic.pl, detailing the origin and development of Stronghold, Portal’s 2009 Spiel release. This article series, now in English, will appear each Saturday on BGN until Trzewiczek runs out of material or Spiel is at our doors – whichever comes first!]

The initial stage of a game design is extraordinary. I have no idea how other authors create games, how the process goes in the case of Knizia, Kramer or Faidutti. I know how I do it. It’s a peculiar occurrence: I imagine people playing my game.

In the beginning I’m not worried about the mechanics in the slightest. I don’t make a draft for a nice bidding idea, nor do I take notes regarding an interesting way of drawing cards. I drive my car, listen to some nice music, and imagine people playing a game. I think about what emotions I want to achieve, I think about what I’d like them to be doing during the game. I imagine the whole match. Afterwards I will come up with rules, which will provide the sensations and emotions that I dreamt about.

How did the first images of Stronghold look? How did I imagine the game?

In the first part of this series I used the word Westerplatte, and with good reason. This is how I imagined the game: Enormous invading forces on one side, and a few defenders on the other. A wave of faceless troops, a huge mass of soldiers on one side and a handful of soldiers supported by a few special characters on the other. On one side successive regiments of the attackers, on the other something similar to the Fellowship of the Ring, with a charismatic Aragorn, a brave Boromir, a wise Gandalf. I wanted a sense of inevitability of the castle falling, I wanted the attacking player to have an ominous smile on his face, to be certain that he’ll eventually enter the castle, it’s just a question of time. I wanted him to flood the walls, to build catapults and siege engines and thwart the desperate defender’s efforts with a cruel satisfaction.

On the other side I imagined this defender, a player with four or five heroes on the walls who are helping the defender’s troops persevere, who thanks to their unique skills enable the defenders to resist the enemy’s pressure. I imagined the defending player declaring that Aragorn is now speaking in front of the troops, with every soldier on the wall now sporting a strength bonus +1, I imagined Boromir charging at a throng of enemies and taking out all of the invader’s markers on one of the wall sections. I imagined the invader acknowledging that setback with a smile of contempt and whispering: “This is your last turn. You stood well, but now it’s the end...”

In those initial, hastily imagined assumptions I wanted the defender to win by surviving ten turns, or lose if the invader breaks into the castle. Eventually this condition changed, but this was the approach in the beginning: A realized plan and the pressure of constant forces versus improvisation and the constant patching up of holes. Enormous invading forces against unique, powerful defenders, each having only a few ability points. Catapults smashing walls turn after turn, fighting on the walls, where ten invaders and two defenders fall – for the invader ten corpses is a piece of cake, whereas two fallen men for the defender puts him one step from defeat.

This imagining of a game is a fascinating adventure. It’s a stage where everything is possible, a moment where I can paint the coolest scenes in my head and imagine that the game rules will manage to carry my dreams and make them come true. And that I’ll be able to create game mechanics that will provide the emotions and impressions I dream about. And that in a few months, when the players sit down to play the game, there will be that cruel smile on the face of the self-confident invader, and the defender’s face will be of a courageous commander who has only a few soldiers, but who wouldn’t surrender the castle for the world, a man who will bend over backwards to use every rule created by me to hold the castle until the tenth turn.

I went to Warsaw in December 2008 to meet my friends, and we played, had fun and discussed games. At some point a question was asked: “Trzewik, you know a lot of games. Listen, I’m looking for a game which doesn’t place players in the same position. You know, whenever I buy a game, every player starts with exactly the same stuff, players pursue the same goal, to eventually learn who, considering the same starting position, did best. I’m looking for a different game. A game with different goals for different players, or with different starting points, I don’t know, something that would make me feel that each person at the table implements a different tactic. What would you recommend?”

Poor me, what am I supposed to do? The guy takes me for an authority, flat out asks for advice, and I stare at him with a blank mind. “You know, I don’t know. In Starcraft as far as I know the races are very differentiated. In our NS HEX the armies differ completely, too...”

It wasn’t what he had hoped for. “But you know, it should really differ, not that one player has a different ability, but each of them plays differently. The board is their clashing spot, but their goals and the tools for achieving them are completely different.”

I was looking at him, looking at the wall behind him. I was mentally browsing through all the boxes on the shelf in my house, and he was right. In those games the players have the same starting position, the same goal, and in the course of the game it comes out who achieved the goal more effectively. Eventually I recalled Stronghold. “You know, I don’t know if there is such game, I can’t recall any. But next year there will be one. I’ve been working on a game for some time now, a board game with a castle siege. The players there are in totally different situations, and have totally different tools to achieve different goals. It may be what you’re looking for. And I can tell you that working on it until now I haven’t realized how innovative this is. I’ve never noticed it.”

Ever since that conversation I have consistently made sure to make the fun for both the Invader and the Defender differ as much as possible. Maybe this will be the feature that makes the game a success.

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