Ignacy Trzewiczek: Game Designer’s Journal #13 – Replayability, Replayed

[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. Links to segments #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11 and #12.]

I believe that every game has at its core a rule representing the concept of the whole game, a philosophy which can be presented in one or two sentences. Tens of lesser rules are built around it to enrich the fun. Citadels? “On your turn you’re building a district; additionally you’re using your character’s special ability.” Samurai? “On your turn you’re positioning the troop tiles on the board, fighting for an advantage around the towns.” Settlers of Catan? “On your turn, you roll dice to see whether you gained resources, then you trade them and use them to build roads, settlements and towns.” In Stronghold such a sentence would probably be: “On your turn you assign your troops to take actions like machine construction and troop training. Depending on the number of assigned troops, your opponent receives an equal number of action points for his defensive actions.”

The event cards I had tried to use to strengthen replayability were an addition to the actual game, not its integral part. I had to ensure replayability on the core level, the game’s main part – not by using an extension. I’d wheeled and dealed. The solution was born eventually.

By damn accident.

The Invader’s actions, as I’ve said before, were written down on a sheet with the Resources field, the Machine Construction field, the Rituals field, etc. This sheet annoyed me for various reasons, such as when a rule changed because I then had to hand copy the whole sheet. Or a new rule would appear, so I had to rework the whole thing to make it fit the sheet. Or beta testers would whine that once a phase (e.g., Machine Construction) was completed, it couldn’t be marked.

So I finally waved the A4 sheet, which was supposed to represent the Invader’s camp, and split it into separate cards: the Resources card, the Machine Construction card, the Training card, the Rituals card, and the Dispatch card. This change allowed me to make quick modifications based on what came out of test matches, and the cards were much clearer for the players at the same time. They had six cards in front of them and could tick one as completed after each phase. It worked.

And then bang! A revelation came.

I had the Machine Construction card together with a Catapult and Ladders in front of me: “Hmm, maybe I should do another, alternative card, with a Trebuchet and a Ballista...?” I looked at other phases like Training and Rituals. If I made the effort, I could think of more additional options for each of them. Then, before a Stronghold match, a player would draw one card for every phase. One time he would draw Catapults, another time it would be a Trebuchet. One time Saboteurs, another time Marksmen. One time Blood Stones, another time Possession. A different match every time.

Multidej was the first person to hear this new idea. He listened and immediately got enthusiastic about it. “It’s like there are different commanders and engineers in the game. There could be their profiles drawn on the side, such as some bloodthirsty shaman with his murderous rituals, or a different shaman – the tactics master – with completely different rituals on another card… These cards could be given a human face to show there are different commanders with different ideas for war...”

Oh, yes, Multidej fell in love with this idea straight away. And I fell in love with his vision of different people representing different concepts and attack philosophies. You draw an engineer who believes that the castle should be taken by building trebuchets, or one who likes to build ballistas… Superb.

Arduous fun had begun…

Phase one, resources. I took coloured pencils and went wild. I drew a lake on one card, a thick forest on another, a forest and quarries on yet another. It would represent the setting for the siege, one time by the lake, another time in the forests… Each card would give different resources, one time a player would have lots of wood, another time a bit of wood and stones, or lots of wood and food. This set-up would determine the whole course of the game. Similarly the second phase, War machines, was changed. Ballistas, Trebuchets and Ladders were added to the already existing Catapult.

The work took long weeks. I created seven different options for one of the phases, seven different war machines, seven types of training, rituals, seven different dispatch types. I divided them into basic and special. Basic, like the Catapult or the Saboteurs, would appear on three out of five Invader’s cards. Special ones, like the Trebuchet or the Quartermaster, would appear on only one card.

Those additional options appeared gradually. Their numbers were increasing. One time the testers were playing with a battering ram, another time with a siege tower. At one point someone moaned: “C’mon, I didn’t draw any Saboteurs. How am I supposed to win?!” Separate matches started to differ significantly from one another.

There was a moment, sometime in early June, when at last I started hearing what I had wanted to hear for long months: “Shit, unlucky. I made a few mistakes in this match. I would play it differently now, and I really want to play again.” I smiled and said, “But you do know that each phase has five different cards, so you’re sure to have a completely different set next time? Today there was no siege tower, there were no saboteurs, no bloodstones in the game. There are seven different machines, seven different equipment types, seven types of training in the game… There’s a lot for you to learn; you need to learn how to play with the Towers, the Ballistas, how to use the Battering Ram… You will be making mistakes in many coming matches, before you learn it all.”

Eyes wide open. Dreamy face. A question: When’s the rematch?

I had worked for that for seven long, tough months. I was in heaven.

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