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Courtier began its game life as Henry the Great. This title immediately brings to mind Henry VIII of England – however, my game was about the much-revered Henry IV of France (1553-1610). Champlain's Dream, David Hackett Fischer's engaging history of French-speaking settlements in the New World, inspired me to make a game about the complicated court intrigue surrounding Henry IV.
Fischer describes a world populated by strange, but important-sounding, figures such as Intendant, Chancellor and Marshal who sought to administer the kingdom of France. Many religious groups, both Catholic (Jesuit and Recollet orders) as well as Protestant (Huguenot), and numerous artisans and businessmen all vied for the patronage of their king. Added to this web were several layers of nobility and those supporting the Queen, Marie de Medici (yes, those Medicis). In 1600, the famous Cardinal Richelieu was only a bishop, yet he had already begun to maneuver his way into the royal court. And hardly anything was done without the consent of the powerful Minister Maximilien de Bethune, duc de Sully. Samuel de Champlain, the great explorer and founder of Québec, routinely wove his way in and out of this complex mess to secure needed permissions, capital and supplies.
I admired Champlain's skill at navigating this sea of bureaucratic red tape. It seemed like a compelling setting – the kind of story that could be told by a board game. I began writing down all these names and titles, imagining them all swirling around the king. Mechanically, the board was to have eight sections. By playing cards from their hands, players would try to persuade the individual characters to help them influence the king to grant a specific request or petition. In addition, players would also get special abilities for controlling an entire section.
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Playtest board for Henry the Great
The tension arises from having to decide when to use up your favors with a particular individual. Characters have only so much access to the king at any given time. Players get victory points for completing petitions, but they lose influence on the board in the process, potentially losing special abilities from the section bonuses. Any player might use an individual as long as that character was "full" (filled with cubes) and that player had the most cubes in place. All cubes are removed from a character used to influence the king and secure a petition.
The card-driven play combined with elements of set-collection and area control seemed to model the controlled chaos that characterized this historical setting. As can be seen in my first game, Revolution!, I enjoy games that feature political chaos and tactical manipulation. From the beginning, Henry the Great displayed these qualities while being very different from other games. I was encouraged by early testing and decided to pursue the game's development more seriously.
Making the Prototype
Often budding game designers are given this sage advice: Make the prototype from anything you can find as quickly and cheaply as possible. This truism has a lot going for it. You don't want to spend ten hours making a logo for a game that doesn't work. You don't want to spend good money on clever-looking components for a game no one will ever get the chance to play. I've done both, to some degree.
The idea behind making a prototype is to figure out whether the design process should continue: Do you have a game that pretty much works? Is there a glimmer of promise? So far, the advice holds. You've been able to create a halfway playable game in record time and for a bargain price. Now you're ready for Stage II, the point where we must venture beyond the conventional advice.
By the time I assembled a working prototype for Henry the Great, I began to sense my growing need for playtesters. My family and friends had fulfilled that role for the last couple of years, but my needs were increasing just as their endurance was shrinking. If you are a game designer, you need playtesters, too. That's where Stage II enters the scene. Playtesters do not want to play ugly games. Uwe Rosenberg or Friedemann Friese might be able to generate burning enthusiasm with only three hastily-scrawled-upon napkins and some croutons, but the rest of us need to add some production value to our prototypes.
During an early playtesting session, it became obvious that the cards needed to be color-coded. Forcing players to navigate their way through twenty-two different characters and eight different sections, all in black and white, qualified as sadistic torture. Stage II involved adding color and improving the graphic design of the components. However, I soon began to understand that my audience was not really the playtesters, but the publishers who would ultimately judge my game. This brought me to Stage III.
At this point I had done prototypes for Revolution!, Kingdom of Solomon, and a few other games that have yet to find a home. I wanted Henry the Great to stand out from the pack and flex my graphic design muscles. I chose a black background and an old painting for the cover. The board featured parchment and my first attempt at icons. The cards also looked much more finished. The result was a prototype I could be proud of. This version finally won some much-needed attention.
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Looking better!
So here is the updated advice for prospective game designers: Make the prototype quickly from anything you can find. Once you have a game, improve the prototype enough to interest playtesters. Once you get a finely-tuned game, make it shine.
Pitching the Game
Now I was ready to approach some publishers. Even during this phase, the game continued to change and improve. No matter how "finished" you think your game is, feedback from a publisher can lead to important improvements even if they ultimately take a pass. Such was my experience.
My plan was to take the game to Origins 2010, held in Columbus, Ohio. Only a month before the convention, I had a key playtesting session during which the game completely broke. One of my friends had figured out how to exploit the "Court" section (now the "Royal Family"), protecting all his cubes from being removed or switched. Instead of fulfilling Petition Cards for victory points, he proceeded to ignore them and occupy every section of the board. Once he had complete control, the other players could do nothing but watch him grind out points.
This painful episode highlighted a key flaw and led to a revamp of that section's power. In the final version, the protection does not apply to the Royal Family section itself so players can more easily dislodge someone attempting to lock down the board.
Finally, Origins arrived. My first appointment was with a rather large game company. I had never pitched a game to this company before, and it was an intimidating experience to say the least. The head of the company asked, "Why am I doing all this?" I thought, "Because it's how you play?" It took me a while to figure out where he was coming from and his concern for a game's theme. He also asked why he couldn't choose some petitions from a public selection at the side of the board. (All petitions were then held secretly.) Good point. After that I made public petitions a part of the game.
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Sample Power card
from Henry the Great
After this I entered Henry the Great into the Hippodice competition, complete with a fantastic picture of the game setup. It did not make the cut, which was discouraging. The game returned to the shelf until a fateful meeting at Gen Con 2011 with Edward Bolme of Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG).
Development at AEG
When I showed up at the AEG area, Edward invited me to play another game being pitched. This lasted only a few minutes and did not really go well. Next was my turn. I showed him one of my many prototypes. It turned out not to be a good fit, so I presented one more game, Henry the Great. He seemed to be intrigued, calling over his colleagues to try it out. They began talking about a secret line of games, winking and nudging each other without revealing anything. After swearing me to secrecy, they told me about Tempest, a series of interconnected games set in the city-state of Tempest. They took my prototype, requested a few more copies, and set about deciding whether or not Henry the Great, suitably re-themed, could become a part of the Tempest universe. After a few weeks, we had a deal. I was very pleased.
I discovered that AEG has a brilliant and well-designed method of game development. My previous encounters with professional game development ranged from me having a minimum of input to me having almost complete responsibility. At AEG I enjoyed a happy median. AEG utilizes an active testing forum to complement its in-house teams. They recruit playtesters from all over the country and beyond who print out copies of new games and play them over and over. In the course of a month Courtier endured these cleansing fires and emerged better than ever.
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Sample Fashion card
Several optional rules have been included. Players may start by dealing out cards to all the players or bidding on the revealed hands before the game begins. A two-player variant features a challenging ghost player. Other rules allow players to lengthen or shorten the game as they see fit and to tailor certain rules to better suit player preferences.
So that's the story of how Courtier came into being. Thanks for reading this lengthy article. I've enjoyed recounting this amazing journey. Thanks to all the many people who have helped along the way. I hope you enjoy the exciting new world of Tempest!
Philip duBarry
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Sample Influence cards from Courtier
Editor's note: This diary was originally serialized on AEG's website. —WEM
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