[LONG!] Pharaoh's Heir design - (was: Re: So Copycats and Confusion Win??)

["Benedict" <boycat_oh@...>]

Mike wrote:

> I'll mention one other thing regarding copying. If I had, by 
chance come up with a game which was so close to Fresh Fish 
(in my example) as to be essentially identical in all significant 
aspects of play, and then afterwards found this to be the case, I 
would have been very frustrated and would not have posted the 
game (if I hadn't already). Priority does count for something. 
> 
> From a quick reading of the rules to Pharaoh's Heir, it doesn't 
look to me like it will play in a way very close to that of any other 
game, without adding anything of its own. And obviously Rob 
doesn't think it does. I look forward to trying it myself when I have 
time.

Just like Mike, I would never knowingly create a game for the 
piecepack that was almost identical to an existing game, and I 
certainly wouldn't enter such a game in a design contest.  The 
piecepack can be used to play existing games (see 
piecepack.org for piecepack versions of mancala etc).

I enjoyed Mike's post on the development of Alien City as a 
piecepack game (and contest entry), so I thought I would chart 
Pharaoh's Heir in the same way.

As opposed to putting published games in a blender, the game 
started out as an aborted attempt at a Changing Landscapes 
contest game last year.  I couldn't get the central mechanic to 
work, and left it alone fairly quickly.  When the 4th contest was 
designed I went back to it as I really wanted to make it work. 

The main feature of that game was a river that ran through a 
kingdom (the river was 4 piecepack tiles long and the kingdom 
was built on either side). The key point about the river was that it 
could move - a tile could be added at one end and 'push' the rest 
of the river down a tile length.  This meant that a player's farm or 
city or whatever that on one turn was adjacent to a lot of water 
could end up next to less water or no water at all the next turn.

The game also featured a set way each turn developed - I think it 
was something like river phase, develop phase, harvest phase, 
population phase, mining phase, build phase then religious 
phase. Each phase followed from the previous one, and players 
had no influence over the phases.  The coins were the villagers 
and I did have money and canals/grain (see some of my other 
games like Kingdoms of the  Middle Sea and Piecepack 
Subways for other examples of my pennies and matches 
resource games). The aim of the game was to have the best 
kingdom.

Initially the problems were that the river idea worked fine 
(although it was pretty abstract - a flood tile could be adjacent to 
a drought tile on the same river), but the rest was both 
unbalanced, since if a player got a crop tile earlier than the 
others it was pretty much predictable that that player would win. 
Also, it was really only a game for 4 players.  With 2 there wasn't 
enough interaction, and with 3 one player was left alone on one 
side of the river and the 2 players on the other side had a harder 
time competing for resources.

The first major breakthrough was to change the river (which had 
always been the 6 arms tiles) into a river "deck", which functions 
like the event decks that are present in many games. In fact I feel 
that the river "deck" is the central mechanic of the game (more 
about this later).

This left the problem of an uneven start for the players. I toyed 
around with different start setups, but if each player started with 
three tiles already in play then half the game was over - plus it 
was still unbalancing as at that time the numbers on the tiles 
reflected production ability. The conception of the play mat was 
the second major breakthrough. All players now started on equal 
footing, and all players were now affected in the same way by the 
river tiles.

The two above changes now made the rest of the phases 
incredibly boring!  If everyone started on an equal footing and did 
exactly the same thing each phase, then the game ended in a tie 
- I had changed the game from an unbalanced one into a very 
tedious but extremely even one!!  

Between initial idea and this point I had been playing a lot of 
Puerto Rico.  It is a great game that I am not very good at. I 
realized that the phases in my game, while linked in various 
ways, would be very interesting if they happened in a different 
sequence each turn. And if you give the players the choice of 
what happens next, then there has to be an incentive for 
choosing that phase. So I ended up, eventually, using the 
role-choosing mechanic from Puerto Rico. I'd like to point out 
that I enjoy games with this type of mechanic, and had in the 
past designed a piecepack game where this mechanic is also 
central (King Arthur's Court). Partly because it came so late in the 
design process and partly because of the river "deck" mechanic 
which had been my initial epiphany, I have never felt the phase 
selection to be central to Pharaoh's Heir.  I saw much later that if 
you are fresh to the game (and have played Puerto Rico even 
once) you could at first think I had "rehashed" it. Unlike Puerto 
Rico, all five phases are selected every turn. Players also take 
turns in selecting phases - thus downtime between choosing is 
kept to an absolute minimum, unlike Puerto Rico where you 
choose last in the turn after you choose first.

The final major change was the introduction of the 'period of 
unrest' where the play mats are cleared.  It was at this time that 
the theme of ancient Egyptian civilization's ups and downs 
crystallized as part of the game. The design reason for including 
this is actually so that you don't need to have 3 piecepacks to 
play, since a number of turns that was divisible by 4 and 3, ie 12, 
was needed!  I was already concerned that people would be put 
off by the 2 piecepack requirement, so I decided to 'reuse' the 
tiles in a second cycle. This is where the Egypt theme, as well as 
a sense of the game repeating history within itself came from. As 
a note, I had included this in the game by the time Amun-Re (a 
game which uses this 'half-time clearing' mechanic) was 
released, and although I have since read the rules I have not 
played - although I want to!!

I tweaked the scoring a lot, as I didn't want it to be too easy for 
one person to get ahead. At one point the difference in scores 
from 1st through 4th in a resource was large, but in the end the 
points scored are much closer together. This kind of scoring is 
prevalent in many games, I didn't personally associate it with any 
particular game, although since the whole discussion on re-use 
of game mechanics I have since read that El Grande is 
considered one of the first games to get a lot of attention (and 
awards) that uses this type of scoring. By the way this is another 
game that I haven't played before, and want to.

Lastly, I usually make comments on game design within my 
game rules and Pharaoh's Heir was no exception.  I decided at 
the last minute to remove them. I felt that it would be better to let 
the judge and his playtesters decide for themselves how the 
game played, and what mechanics it used. As it turns out Rob 
saw from one read through that the game had elements used in 
other games, almost to my poor creation's rejection!!  Fortunately 
for me the way the game plays saved the day.

Hopefully this has been of interest to some of you (must have 
been if you are still reading), and perhaps added something to 
the current discussion on re-use of mechanics in new games for 
the piecepack.

I would like to thank everyone who has had positive things to say 
about Pharaoh's Heir, and I am always open to feedback and 
constructive criticism.

Phillip