Designer Diary: Dawn of Peacemakers

This diary was first posted on the game's own forum between October 6 and November 16, 2017. This is a condensed version of the original six-part write-up that can be read here.

It was clear from the start that I wanted to make something unique with Dawn of Peacemakers, something not seen in a cardboard form. What if I made a war game...in which players aren't fighting for victory but rather trying to achieve peace? When I had this idea, I knew I had came up with a game idea that I had to pursue.

After thinking about the theme for a while, it became clear that players wouldn't be the ones controlling the warring sides, at least not directly. This meant that I needed a game engine that could simulate two sides waging war, and that simulation should be able to create interesting and tense moments by itself. I didn't even bother thinking about how the players would affect the sides or what else the players would do. If the war simulation would end up being boring by itself, influencing it wouldn't get players excited either.

After countless iterations, I had created a simple artificial intelligence, an AI that decides what its side's units would do and when. I rigorously tested different AIs by pitting them against each other time after time, making adjustments between sessions. Only after this core engine created tense situations did I start thinking of ways for the players to influence the game. I liked most the goal of players trying to exhaust the sides to form a truce and finally a peace.

One of the first prototypes of the armies' order cards

I wanted to include a story campaign with a continuing narrative and high replay value. Would it be possible to achieve both? I want you to experience new and different outcomes each time you play the game. One element that makes this possible is a variable set-up that pushes the game in unique directions. In Dawn of Peacemakers, there are small tweaks to the set-up based on your path leading to any single scenario. One example is that if a unique leader gets defeated, they're not coming back in any following scenario. They are dead, after all.

Another way to create variety is through randomization during play. For my taste, this needs to be done in a deliberate way so that players don't lose too much control. In Dawn of Peacemakers, this comes about via AIs that are controlled by their order decks. These are shuffled during set-up, which results in armies acting in varied ways. In one game, an army can be extremely aggressive, attacking the opposing side relentlessly. Next time, the exact same army can feel totally different, making calm evasive moves. Each order deck is built during set-up by following the scenario-specific rules to give the army a tendency to act in a smart and believable way following their intentions in the scenario.

Most board games introduce choices for the players. These also result in varied game states as long as players don't make identical decisions each time. There are certain things in the game that address players' decisions as soon as players feel comfortable with the core engine. I can't go further into this discussion without spoiling the fun of discovery.

The next prototype, featuring two order cards per army

Dawn of Peacemakers has multiple scenarios linked together with a story. How would players progress through it? Would there be multiple branches? How much would players be able to affect the story? These were just a few of the questions floating in my head without clear answers. The story doesn't have multiple main branches. I came to this conclusion because that way the story would have more structure and I could keep the scenario count to a manageable size. If I would introduce a lot of branches, most players would see only a fraction of the content anyway.

How would players interact and affect the story? I wanted to avoid interrupting gameplay as much as possible. This way, any story told during the game would come naturally from the players and their actions during the play. It would be unique. My aim was to give players enough background information and lore before each individual game that they could then tell their own story of how the events take place on the board. You need to be able to familiarize yourself with the setting in order to fully dive into it. After each game, there are multiple closures to each fight based on the end result.

Akezan the fennec fox's sketch and sculpt

The main content of the game is the twelve scenario co-operative campaign. There are sealed components that you will unlock during it, encountering many surprises while doing so. The game isn't a legacy game as nothing is destroyed, and you can replay any single scenario or even the whole campaign as many times as you want. Why? Continuing story, surprises, fresh gameplay. Those three are my favorite things in legacy games.

Destroying components, on the other hand, is something I'm not so keen on. When I consider purchasing a game, I like being able to play it as many times as I wish. I have purchased Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, and Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 with my game group. Those were all great experiences, but sadly I can't revisit those games after finishing them. My ultimate goal was to make something that's as memorable or even more so while providing huge replay value at the same time.

One thing that some legacy games fail to do properly is scale. They may start extremely simple and end up heavier with all the added complexity. Some offer higher complexity to begin with and end up so convoluted that the players end up enjoying the game less the more they play it. It's hard to make an unfolding game like this and not have it creep up so much that the players who loved it at first can't recognize it later. This is the reason why we as designers have to put constraints on ourselves. My philosophy is to add things in only if I really have to do so. This way I rarely have to cut things out. Still, with Dawn of Peacemakers I had to cut some parts out. While it hurts at first, it almost always makes the game better.

It would be critical to pace any new mechanisms and components in the correct rhythm. If I do it too quickly, players get overwhelmed, but if I do it too slowly, players might get bored. One thing that I kept doing after each playtest was make the first scenario more simple. It's easy to forget how complex your game is to an outsider when you know it inside-out. It was critical to get the game in the hands of new players all the time.

Sample resource and unit cards

Oh, did I mention that the game comes with two game modes? You can also command the armies directly in skirmishes. That could be its own game, but I foolishly included it in the same box. That, however, is a different story to be told some other time...

Sami Laakso