In the earliest development of Rebellion: Britannia we were visualizing the systems in the form of various levers, so that the key elements of Briton Tension, Briton Warbands, and Legion Cohesion (which is rather fun to say out loud) all had mechanisms to both increase and decrease them. We might show this in the form shown in Table 1. (It did not look this neat in our original notebooks.)

These different card types would come to be more specifically realized, with specific names and quantifiable effects. We already had in mind incentives for all levers, of some kind or another, even if those mechanisms were not present in the form shown above. For example, Rome would have the incentive to create buildings, even though it would increase Briton Tension, because these buildings would generate Victory Points. Trade was another subsystem it would take more time to develop, but it would also have a function beyond just decreasing Briton Tension.

One of the key dynamics we were attempting to represent in our game was that military might alone was not the solution for Rome to address the rebellions. (Indeed, military might alone is never the entire solution for insurgencies.) Quite apart from the large amount of territory for just four legions to cover, in some sense military might was part of the problem. Although legions may be superior in battle, they were not invulnerable – as the serious defeat of the IX legion at Camulodunum (61 CE) at the hands of Boudica demonstrated. Legions were also a direct catalyst to rising British Tension. This British Tension was the essential fuel to turn the populace into Warbands, but when Legions appeared those Warbands might disband, and the Legions would have a difficult time confronting insurgency in its ‘liquid form’.

Later in development we decided to revisualize the systems in place to help better convey the dynamic ways the systems operated and interconnected – see Figure 1. This visualization attempts to show how Roman Legions have different ways to generate Victory Points (VP), through destroying Briton Warbands, building, or suppressing Briton Tension. The Britons may use Warbands to destroy Legions, or to destroy what Legions have built to generate VP. In addition, Britons may use their Tension pieces to generate VP through various means (this might be by expanding them, or removing them to keep Rome happy, for example), or they may convert Tension into Warbands – or Warbands into Tension. Legions cannot do any damage to Tension, but will destroy Warbands if they can find them exposed. As mentioned, Legions, just by their presence, can generate Tension (the Britons do not respond well to the presence of enemy armies), and by building (the Britons do not respond well to the emergence of new structures dominating their landscapes). This visualization does not capture the dynamics around the different Briton factions – the ways in which these different factions may interact.

This technique – of visualizing more complex systems ‘inside the machine’ of the game design – seems to us to have some merit. It can help designers ‘see’ the model they are designing prior to deeper development and the evolution of a prototype, and help to formulate the key elements of a thesis they intend their game to carry (or perhaps it carries more than one thesis). It strikes us as being a potentially useful tool to re-check assumptions and design intentions later on in development too.

Other Rebellion: Britannia Articles

Author: Daniel Burt and Maurice Suckling