The design of Time of Crisis started with one fairly simple idea.  Wray was living and working in Chicago, so I was lucky to be able to meet with him in person fairly frequently.  At one game day at my house, we were discussing possible game design projects, and I related my interest in the (at the time) relatively new deckbuilding concept that had been made popular by Donald Vaccarino’s Dominion.  Wray and I were, of course, both fans of the card-driven game (CDG) framework, especially from our work together on Sword of Rome.  So I asked, “What if we designed a game that combined the best features of deckbuilding and CDGs?”  Wray was immediately interested, and this became the focus for our next project.

We first agreed on what we felt were the most salient characteristics of these two styles of games.  We believed that a CDG must have cards that are the primary driver for players’ actions on the board; additionally, the cards must have multiple uses, providing a choice between some type of action points for performing “standard” actions, and a historical event that typically provides a more powerful, but more specific or restricted “special” action.  The on-board action of a CDG typically involves moving and battling with discrete armies or units, overlaid with some kind of area control system.  Some CDGs provide a single deck of cards that all players draw from, while others provide a separate deck for each player.  A deckbuilding game must provide players a relatively weak set of starting cards that can be expanded and/or upgraded over the course of the game, as the player wishes.  So the hybrid game we were looking for would ideally be a CDG where each player would have a unique deck that they could build during the game, rather than being fixed at the start of the game.  We had other constraints in mind, though, as well:  we wanted to design a game that would be easy to learn and playable in about 2 hours, so it would be a fairly light wargame, accessible to a wide variety of players.  Put another way, a blend of “Euro” game and wargame design principles.  This balance point would become an ongoing consideration and touchpoint in our design efforts.

Our next question was, “Can we demonstrate a straightforward system of deckbuilding that generates action points for on-board actions, instead of just generating currency to buy more cards?”  We wanted to create a simple proof of concept that would show a functioning board game being driven by a deckbuilding engine.  It didn’t particularly matter to us what the game was, and we wanted to do it quickly, so we chose Chess.  We drafted a simple card-driven approach to Chess, with 3 separate “action point currencies” that could be used to build pieces on the board, move pieces, and attack/capture pieces, respectively.  Players started with a fixed set of “level 1” cards, and we provided a simple mechanic for acquiring new cards of higher level in a step-wise progression.  It only took a couple of sample plays to see that the basic system was actually very playable and suitable.  (As it turns out, this proof of concept game itself may have had some market value, as later shown by Jeremy Lennert’s For the Crown.)

With a usable deckbuilding framework, we then had to decide on a game setting.  Wray had always foreseen a Fall of Rome “bookend” design to Sword of Rome (original working title:  Rise of Rome).  In fact, we had had extensive discussion of possible more traditional CDG design ideas in this space in the past, and Wray had also prototyped a solitaire design as well.  We both wanted to work with this setting, so it seemed a natural choice for moving forward.  We envisioned a semi-cooperative game where players represented different political factions of Imperial Rome, battling each other for supremacy while withstanding historical waves of barbarian invasions and other threats.  Originally thinking to include the entire sweep of Imperial history from Augustus to the Fall of Rome, research rather quickly convinced us that this scope and time scale was just much too big for the type of action in a typical CDG to encompass.  Either turns would have to span decades, making actions far too coarse-grained to match the normal expectations of moving armies and conducting battles, or the action would have to be decomposed into hundreds of game turns, making the game far too long in duration, even if turns took mere seconds to complete.

Wray suggested limiting our scope to the Roman Crisis of the Third Century, a period of about 50 years when Rome faced so many internal and external threats that it nearly fell, until Diocletian’s reforms re-stabilized the Empire.  During this time, civil war was rampant, with Emperors of various pedigree striking each other down almost as fast as they could be declared, while foreign forces (mostly barbarian tribes) loomed on all borders.  This would provide the perfect setting and rationale for multiple players to be battling against each other for control of Rome.

Our first prototype almost directly lifted the deckbuilding framework from our Chess proof of concept, retaining the 3 action point currencies.  We started with a relatively simple area movement and political control system.  Players paid action points generated by their cards in hand to build legions, take control of and improve provinces, battle barbarians and each other, and most importantly, become Emperor.  In truth, a large percentage of the basic design concepts from the first prototype are still present in Time of Crisis today in some form.  However, there were also quite a few differences.  One important early idea was that a player could only gain legacy (victory) points while being Emperor.  A player could become Emperor through a simple bidding process somewhat separated from the action on the board.  Legacy points could be gained for nearly any pro-Roman action taken on the board, while points could be lost for any action taken against another player, with both positive and negative victory points recorded in the form of cards added into players’ decks.  Acquiring a new card of a higher level involved playing 2 matching lower-level cards (somewhat similar to what can now be seen in Mr. Card Game, by Evertide Games.)

While early plays of the prototype were essentially functionally effective, there were issues to be addressed.  In particular, there were too many rules questions around army activations, and deck progression seemed to be too slow.  The idea of legacy points being added to players’ decks was dropped fairly quickly because it had a strongly repressive effect on deck growth.  We worked on changing how new cards were acquired, as well as how many different card options were available for purchase.  In order to start addressing troubles with army movement and other on-board actions, we introduced point-to-point movement and carried over most of the “standard” CDG notions of how armies move and battle.  This ended up leading down a path toward the “wargame” end of the spectrum, with the addition of many new rules to drive how armies worked, how provinces were controlled, how barbarians worked, and how cards were purchased.  A detailed system of unrest was layered over the province control system.  A deck of major historic events was added to the crisis generation system.  Also, importantly, it was during this time that the means for becoming Emperor was integrated directly into the on-board actions, to bring key focus to Italia on the map.

All of these additions and changes brought their own level of additional interest to the game, but as playtesting continued, it slowly became apparent that some issues with balance were off.  For one thing, each addition to the design tended to increase the duration of the game, until it was running more than double our target duration of 2 hours, with games sometimes not converging to a satisfying conclusion.  Increased options led to longer player turns and increased opportunities for players to prevent each other from winning.  More “chrome” increased the degree of “fiddliness” (complicated awkwardness) of the game, with many special cases to remember on the board and in the rules.  But of greatest concern was an ongoing struggle with the balance of card purchase costs.  Either cards were too difficult to purchase, slowing the game considerably, or too easy to purchase, breaking the balance of stronger special actions vs. standard actions.  Just when we thought we had the balance right, playtesters would discover a way to abuse one of the special action cards, or some other exploit in one of the game subsystems.  Through the Law of Unintended Consequences, tweaking one part of one subsystem seemed to inevitably lead to an unbalance in another subsystem.

We worked through these complexities extensively with several different playtest groups for quite some time without seeming to reach a definitive resolution.  The first 90% of the design had come together quite quickly, but the last 10% seemed to lurk just out of reach.  Finally, Wray decided to take a rather drastic action – he drafted a new set of rules with the objective of “getting back to basics”.  This was not by any means a complete return to the drawing board, but rather an attempt to remove some of the unnecessary complexity and awkwardness that seemed to be the ultimate source of overall balance difficulties.  We kept all of the parts of the design that we felt were essential to the game’s premise – provide a framework for a multi-player struggle for board control, driven by an integrated deckbuilding system, set in the Roman Crisis of the Third Century.

The first thing that we did was to focus on a simpler and cleaner interpretation of the 3 action point currencies in the game.  Rather than having a sort of mixture of abilities across them, each currency would have a very dedicated purpose.

• Blue represents influence of the Senate of Rome, governing actions that take control of provinces on the board. Provinces represent the means for acquiring new power (cards) in the game, and ultimately, legacy through controlling Italia as a legitimate Emperor.
• Red represents Military influence, governing actions that place and move armies on the board. Your armies are used to defend the Empire against barbarians, but also to help force your control over Roman provinces, both of which can improve your legacy.
• Yellow represents influence and popularity among the People of Rome. If Blue and Red provide “offensive” capabilities, Yellow provides “defensive” opportunities through the development of
  additional support in provinces you govern.   With enough popular support, you can gain legacy by building provincial improvements, or even setting yourself up as a Pretender to the throne.

We returned to area movement, as a higher-level abstraction that seemed to fit better with the scale and pacing of the game, and we dramatically simplified army movement again.  We removed the entire unrest subsystem and instead focused all of the game-driven threat in the barbarian subsystem, which was also simplified significantly.  But some of the later changes were retained as well, notably the deck of historical events.  Perhaps most importantly, the system for acquiring new cards, so central to a deckbuilding mechanic, was simplified and generalized.  Rather than attaching the ability to gain certain types of cards to specific locations on the board (not unlike Martin Wallace’s A Few Acres of Snow or A Study in Emerald), we introduced a more straightforward point system that allows players to purchase almost any mix of cards they choose, giving them much greater control over their deck strategy.

Playtest Map for Time of Crisis

All of the challenges we were facing with Time of Crisis were resolved rather quickly through this refinement of the design – game duration came down significantly, misbalances among special actions and other game subsystems were alleviated, and the deckbuilding system became smoother and better paced.

In the end, we believe these changes have finally resulted in a game that achieves the goals we originally set out:

• Integrate a modern deckbuilding mechanic with the army activation and area control notions of a card-driven wargame.
• Play to completion in around 2 hours (definitely achievable for experienced players.)
• Provide ease of accessibility for casual gamers while still providing a competitive multi-player experience.
• Capture the essence of challenges the Roman Crisis of the Third Century without being an overly-scripted simulation.

Many thanks to the groups who have so patiently assisted with playtesting so far, especially the Gamer’s Armory group in North Carolina and the Crystal Lake group in Illinois, but also the folks at the World Boardgaming Championships, Ludophilia, Stack Academie, and Buckeye Game Fest.  All of the feedback we’ve received so far has been invaluable!

Design Diary #2

Design Diary #3

Author: Brad Johnson