“Bayonets & Tomahawks Biweekly” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically every two weeks. It features articles from the Bayonets & Tomahawks development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #5: From Bellin’s map to B&T’s game board: how I use cartography in game design.

First my heartfelt thanks to everyone who pre-ordered the game so far! We reached 500 pre-orders on Halloween night.

The Bayonets & Tomahawks board was key to generating interest in the project. Most people have a positive reaction when they see it and they become curious about the game, which is good because they end up playing it! In this article, I’ll tell the story of its development.

My approach to game board design

Before my graphic design career, I studied mechanical engineering. So there’s a strong focus on functionality whenever I design something. In its essence, a game board is an elaborate chessboard. Period. Any cartographic element appearing on the board must answer a game purpose. It is also desirable that the graphic style and ornaments create a connection to the time period the game covers — even if fictional. But these two aspects must never get in the way of functionality: I have seen game boards that are absolutely gorgeous but get in the way of players.

How cartography is crucial in historical board games

The main purpose of cartography on a game board is to immerse players in the game and regulate movement. What real world area are we covering here? At what time period? How well was it explored at the time? We discover history through maps. It is only logical that we will use cartography in historical games, but to what degree?

Even though I’m fascinated by cartography, I know a map is not a game: it serves only to orient people wherever they are in the world — making map conventions crucial. In space there’s no “up” but north is up on every modern map. Water is always light blue although there are many colors of water: blue, green, white, clear or even murky gray — especially in some cities! Did you know that North is NOT up in many historical maps? Yep, that convention came some time later, and looking at maps made prior to the 20th century, we notice most are devoid of that elaborate coloring of all water areas… Ever seen an Indian map? Doesn’t look much like the ones the Europeans did, but Indians sure found their way to all these ‘awhangan’ (canoe and trail routes) 🙂

1801 Indian map of Louisiana by Ac ko mok ki. North is at right and travel distances are noted in days instead of measured distance.

Mapmaking conventions can be relevant to a game board, but a game designer must know when to shed them off. In a previous version of B&T’s board, the lakes, sea and main connections were light blue. There are no specific river rules in B&T so it is useless to differentiate main connections by their nature (river or road). I chose blue at that time because the majority of movement was by waterway. It made sense from a flavor and cartographic viewpoint, but people trying the game ALWAYS tried to move their fleets from the sea to river connections and lakes. Others criticized the fact that particular connections were not really rivers. In all of these cases, cartography got in the way of the game and I chose other graphic solutions.

Another problem with that board version was that it was harder to spot connections and game elements through all the cartographic details (lakes that have no game purpose, ornamental mountains, etc.). I’d frame it and put it on my wall though 😉

The infamous cartographically correct board.

Map selection according to game intent

With B&T being a game about New France, I wanted the board to have a French 18th century feel. I’ve long been in awe of Nicolas Bellin’s mapmaking and had already used his 1755 map of North America in my 1990’s FIW game attempt. I thought it was still a sound choice for Bayonets & Tomahawks. I also wanted to break from the precise knowledge we now have of the American territory to introduce a degree of disorientation. Bellin’s map helps with that because of its lack of precision, especially inland.

Europeans had a very limited idea of the realities of the North American territory. In Whitehall or Versailles, they would see a river on a map as a highway for troops while in reality it was most probably a sequence of rapids, falls, low water in late season, felled trees obstructions, etc. — all amounting to excruciating work for troops movement. On paper some distances seemed shorter than they really were. And Indians could spring from uncharted expanses along the frontier. They had a very elaborate trail system used for ages.

Part of Carte de l’Amérique septentrionale by Nicolas Bellin, 1755. Note the absence of color on water that can be seen even on full color maps of the period.

The (long) work begins!

For a strategic game in colonial times, a point-to-point movement system was the best choice. It has the added advantage over an area system of making us feel all the rivers and trails.

I endeavored to represent only the places the people were aware of at that time and to which they could actually travel. Lots of unknown areas in colonial North America. I had an overview of known territory in 1751 from an excellent atlas and I completed that information with numerous other cartographic sources and contemporary travel accounts.

Explored areas of Northeast America, from Historical Atlas of Canada. Dark green shows the areas unexplored by Europeans in 1751.

Interpolating, grafting and bending space

What do you do when you use a period map and you need to add places that don’t figure on it because of the limited knowledge it represents? That’s where my amateur cartographer skills were tested and there was much cross-referencing between Google maps, Indian trail maps, traveler accounts and the Bellin map I used. Many late night sessions!

After that, it was time to optimize the playing area. If you follow cartography to the letter, you end up with huge areas where only a fraction of the action takes place, and ultra congested areas where most of your game pieces always pile up. Remember: it’s only an elaborate chessboard. And the cartography, however pretty or historical it is, must not get in the way of the game. We have to switch to ergonomics at that point of the design.

So I distort the map: stretching space where most action occurs and compressing it in less significant areas. This has become my specialty in game board cartography. There’s always the alternative of making an exploded view of a congested area but it breaks fluidity. I prefer to avoid it whenever I can. I rotated the map for best use of a standard 32×24 game board surface and I opted to set the type at 90 degrees so that none of the players (sitting on opposite sides) will have to read upside down. After all that North ends up… wherever: a small arrow indicates it on the board but it’s only flavor. Finally, I clean up the clutter: I wanted to keep all these mountains and little lakes and rivers with nice sounding names to share my love of the 18th century. But out they went. The less distractions players have (even if pretty), the more they can focus on the game play.

Same scale comparison of Bellin’s map, B&T’s board and reality (Google map). Notice the huge gain in playing area in the crucial Lake Champlain corridor (magenta circle). And North America is still recognizable. You can feel all the British colonies (dark red) compressed between the sea and the expanse of wilderness.

The right distances

On B&T’s game board, one area or the other might appear out of scale graphically. This follows precisely my intent of disorientation — remember: you’re an 18th century French or British commander in chief fresh from Europe! If the game board was at consistent cartographic scale, I would assuredly get numerous complaints that pieces don’t fit in a particular area (especially the Champlain corridor). In fact, I feel that a lot of strategy games lack adequate space to place units. I won’t give names but that’s what put me on the track of optimizing playing space! 😉

I ensured that the game respects scale by taking great care to position accurately all sites on the map RELATIVE to each other. And the distances were precisely measured so that even if there are variations in point to point actual distances, overall distances respect scale. This was helped by my work on early versions of B&T where ALL distances were calculated in leagues, and corrected with multiplying factors for each river or mountain stretch.

B&T’s current game board

Game space, the final frontier…

Early in my graphic design career, I was deeply impressed by Edward Tufte’s Envisioning Information book. I’m always exploring new ways of representing space for games. For example, last January I made some research for more organic alternatives to hexes, and I’m currently working on the board of a 19th century political game. In that case, the map doesn’t regulate any movement and only gives context. I studied a lot of electoral maps to see how we envision that kind of information, but there’s still a lot to explore regarding game space!

Previous Article in the Series: B&T Warpath Chronicles #4: Developer’s Introduction

Next Article in the Series: B&T Warpath Chronicles #6: Vassalization, Or How I Learned To Love Online Gaming

Author: Marc Rodrigue