Patrick Korner: BattleLore Discussion with Eric Hautemont (DoW)

Days of Wonder has carved out an enviable niche as a publisher known for putting out imaginative, high-quality games whose hallmarks are engaging gameplay and top-notch production values.  Thanks to the breakout success of Ticket to Ride, a game which won the coveted Spiel des Jahres award in 2004, the company has been growing, taking on more challenging and involving projects.  By far the most challenging and ambitious to date?  The upcoming release BattleLore, which promises to bring the DoW experience to an entirely new arena: fantasy combat.

Eric Hautemont, one of the principals behind the company, was kind enough to spend an hour of his time chatting with me about BattleLore as well as DoW in general; the results of this highly interesting and wide-ranging discussion form the basis of this article.

BattleLore as a game concept has been rolling around inside the head of Richard Borg, the designer, for nearly a decade.  As part of the well-respected Commands and Colours game system (along with Battle Cry, Memoir ’44 and the GMT release Commands and Colours: Ancients), it takes much of the complexity of a traditional combat / wargame and distills it into an elegant card-driven system that is designed for maximum flexibility while still keeping the core concepts simple to understand.  According to Eric, when the DoW team was shown the BattleLore prototype in 2002, they knew right away that it was a highly promising title – but one that was just too difficult for them to do properly at the time.  The sheer scope of the project was more than they could handle, and so the decision was made to develop and release Memoir ’44 first.  That game was a success, spawning a number of expansions and a dedicated fan base willing to stretch the game engine to its limits with new scenarios and variants, paving the way for BattleLore.  Many of the lessons learned from the M44 experience made their way into BattleLore.

BattleLore development started in earnest about 2 years ago, shortly after the release of M44.  This made it possible for the lessons alluded to above to be incorporated into the new title.  What lessons?  Primarily ones regarding rules development and in-game aids, says Eric.  Much of M44’s attraction was the way it simplified combat by abstracting and condensing many of the combat rules – which meant that good summary cards that contained all of these important rules were critical.  Additionally, the rules had to be written in such a way as to make the game easy to pick up – dealing with concepts in a logical manner and in bite-size chunks that could be easily digested.  Because BattleLore is so much broader than M44, it turned out to be a valuable learning experience to have done M44 first and ensure that the game development was up to par.

While superficially similar to M44, there are a lot of subtle differences to BattleLore.  One important change is the Banner system used to determine the strength and ability of individual units.  Essentially, the banner tells you not only the unit’s strength (i.e. colour), but also what type of armament it possesses, making surveying the battlefield simple and intuitive.  The difficulty lies in the fact that the banners need to be removable, since you might not always need the exact complement of units provided in the box.  So, the plastic banners needed to be not only sturdy, but swappable.  Here, knowing how to deal with the Chinese plastics manufacturers (thanks to M44) was a big plus.  The banners that come with the game fit into little bases on each unit and, wonder of wonders, come with all their stickers already stuck – a daunting task to be sure and something that every player is sure to be thankful to DoW for taking care of ahead of time.

Another change, and one not readily apparent to those playing the game, is the change in organizational structure needed to support the game.  The rulebook is of paramount importance to the game, weighing in at 80 pages and chock-full of illustrations, examples and hints.  Normally, DoW would do the rules translation into French in-house, seeing as how DoW is a part US, part French company.  Here, because of the size, all translation work had to be done outside, and the group of people involved in trying to make sure that the rulebook wasn’t too daunting (but still conveyed the point that this is a game system) was sizeable.  One example of the rulebook’s structure:  There is an entire chapter on how to deal with creatures, even though the base game only comes with one (a giant spider).  The amount of effort required to ensure that the rules can expand to encompass all other possible nasties the game’s bestiary might eventually include is indeed enormous – how to write rules that deal with issues that haven’t even come up yet?

Traditionally, game development consists of taking the designer’s vision and distilling it into a form that can be learned without too much trouble and hopefully still contains as much of the designer’s flavour as possible.  With BattleLore, this was partially true, although the major development task, according to Eric, was to refine and simplify the gameplay.  To use Eric’s own words: “The question was: How can we make this work without shipping Richard in the box?â€?  The game system is designed to be flexible and expandable, but the rules need to be clear, concise, and offer as little ambiguity of meaning as possible.  Those who play Magic: The Gathering will recognize that DoW ran into an issue that M:tG ran into some years back: templating.  All text, icons, etc. in the game were edited and re-edited, trying to make things as uniform as possible.  Assigning in-game names to certain effects or features was very useful: it is much easier to say that a unit is Bold instead of saying “the unit may choose to ignore one flag rolled against it ; something which it can do if the unit is directly adjacent to at least two other friendly unitsâ€?.  So the rulebook is the repository for the lengthier definitions, leaving the in-game text to be as short and to the point as possible.  Add shorter versions of the definitions on the summary cards and you have a game whose rules, while extensive, are easy to understand and repeated in enough places to avoid confusion.  It’s worth noting that the card layouts were carefully designed as well, making things such as maximum combat strengths when attacking into or out of various landscape types much easier to oversee.

One of the big differences between BattleLore and other DoW releases is that this time, the game forms the basis for an entire system, with all the expansions and other bits that a system tends to include.  When you think of game systems, you usually think of money sinks like Warhammer or other minis games, Magic, and generally ‘collectible’ games.  This type of approach would be a considerable departure for a company like DoW, who after all first made their name in the industry with family-friendly, traditional boardgames.  When asked about this seeming dichotomy, Eric was pretty candid and admitted that it’s true, this is a game aimed much more at the hobby market than the traditional boardgame market.  However, he maintained that while the concept of a hobby system might be different, the approachability and quality of the game remain true to what DoW does.  BattleLore is absolutely not intended to become the cash cow that the Warhammer universe became for Games Workshop – while the two systems have some similarities, the DoW intent is to structure the expansions differently, so as to not simply offer the player a bigger, badder (and more expensive) army, but to offer new gameplay opportunities, new campaigns and new adventures.  Eric also stressed that the expansions aren’t all required – no ‘keeping up with the joneses’ here – players are free to pick and choose the expansions they are most interested in.  And there’s nothing collectible here – you’ll always know exactly what you’re getting.

In a nutshell, you can think of it this way: What Memoir ’44 is to wargaming, BattleLore is to tabletop / Dungeons & Dragons.  As Eric put is: When you walk into a store, the BattleLore section will look like BattleLore – it won’t look like anything else.  The variety of expansion options, the focus on ‘bang for the buck’ instead of ever-expanding armies of minis, will all combine to create a gaming universe very different from those we’ve seen before.

So what kind of expansions will we see?  Well, the simple answer is: All kinds.  Eric indicated that it’s true, gamers will be able to buy a ton of stuff, but all of it is focused on player development, not army escalation.  In other words, the expansions are intended to allow players to play the game differently or with new goals, and the plan is to provide a lot of company support for player input.  One example of this is the online scenario editor, which is being made freely available to the online community and will be heavily supported.  DoW is hoping that some players will adopt the game the way that some have adopted Memoir ’44, and want to do what they can to ensure that these creative individuals have all the tools they need to produce new and unexpected gaming experiences.

The expansion release roadmap is, as you might expect, still shrouded in some secrecy, but Eric was willing to divulge a few details.  In general, players can expect a couple of blister pack releases a month – sometimes these releases will be new creatures with their lair (the promotional Hill Giant and Earth Elemental figures are a good example), sometimes a new type of unit, sometimes new Lore cards with different spell options, even ones that will give players the option to play as one of the traditional D&D-style subclasses such as a Necromancer.  In other words – lots of little things that can add up to big changes in gameplay.

On top of these smaller expansions, you can expect to see larger expansions released on a less frequent basis – like say a few per year.  Some of these larger expansions might remind players of D&D modules - self-contained campaigns consisting of a set of linked scenarios with commander carryover and similar troops.  This means that the expansion wouldn’t need to be purchased by both players – everything you’d need to play the new module would be included.

The first wave of expansions are being carefully selected to ensure that there is something for everyone, including the ability to build your own army (since there’s no avoiding that completely in any game that features minis and combat!).  But look for new game mechanics like Event decks, Creature decks, lots of things that expand what the game can do.  Remember the open-ended and flexible way the rules were written?  There’s a reason for that, and you’ll start seeing it in a few short weeks.

So what does BattleLore mean for the rest of DoW?  In other words, what assurance is there that DoW won’t succumb to the Dark Side and turn out just like Games Workshop?  Well, Eric was adamant that BattleLore will not change the way DoW approaches the boardgaming market.  Family-oriented games are on a separate track from BattleLore, and any slowdown in releases won’t be because of bandwidth issues – it would be because of a dearth of good family titles. Eric was pretty clear that the company’s success is largely due to Ticket to Ride – a family game if ever there was one – and that for BattleLore to do as well as TtR would not only be a huge success, it would be hugely surprising.  In other words, DoW is perfectly aware of what got them to where they are, and it’s hard to imagine them turning their back on it.

Indeed, Eric made the point that BattleLore will actually help the company when it comes to developing other ambitious projects.  Thanks to the company reorganization, there is more manpower available and the logistics have been streamlined, which means that perhaps things even bigger than BattleLore will see the light of day at some point.

At the end of the conversation, I have to admit I was left pretty enthusiastic about BattleLore and what it might mean for the gaming industry.  I hope that DoW can pull off what they are trying, which boils down to a relatively inexpensive and quick way of re-living some of the epic tabletop or RPG adventures that so many of us remember from earlier, simpler times (like when the only stress in line was making your morning lecture).  I was fortunate enough to get an early copy of the game, and can attest to the fact that while the entire game is produced in China, the quality of the game is superb.  For once, unless you look pretty carefully, the telltale signs of Chinese production aren’t there, which means that DoW has already accomplished something amazing: they made a game in China that really does match up with the best that Europe can offer.  My only wish is that the units weren’t jammed into communal wells at the bottom of the box, but then this is a game that for once truly deserves its box – if anything, it should have been bigger (when’s the last time I ever said THAT?).  I’m already hoping that DoW will release something bigger to hold all of the bits that this game promises to have!

BattleLore is a game that promises big things – not only in terms of the game itself, but what it might mean to the industry.  We will have to see whether DoW can pull off the accomplishments they are gearing up for, but it’s safe to say that if they do, the gaming universe will never be the same.  I, for one, am looking forward to it!

Many thanks to Eric Hautemont for his time and candor, both of which were hugely important for being able to write this article.

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