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As I grew up, game designing became a forgotten hobby, as I was focusing on my career in other ventures. In 2008, though, my main business crashed and I sought redemption in my game designs. I wanted to design a more mature and updated game, so I started researching the "new" genre of board games. I got a copy of Caylus and played it twice with my reluctant wife. This game swept me off my feet and got my mind set on an "original" idea for a game design: a Monopoly-like economic urban game set in a dark fantasy world. Sure, Monopoly is not the best game, but that was my initial thought. I also loved the addictive Euro-building mechanisms, so I started changing my game on this path.
Lords of Waterdeep, or My Big Break
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I didn't strike any deals or sign contracts for any of those games, but I developed good relationships with some publishers and got my mind fixed on what they are looking for in a game. This understanding and the whole Essen experience gave me a great kick. I was fired up and ready to make my games even better!
Then in early 2012, Wizards of the Coast launched Lords of Waterdeep out to the market. I was sitting at home, building a workable prototype so that I could move on to playtesting when I saw this news. I read the description, and my heart was broken by the end of it. Someone else had "stolen" my thunder; I halted my work and left the components out as they were.
In the next couple of days I felt that I was not handling the news very well, and by the fourth day I realized that I should deal with it in a more practical manner. I watched a video review of the game and discovered that they only scratched the surface with their game. They basically developed a Caylus with a fantasy theme, a very simple worker placement game that uses cubes, workers and VPs – what's new about that?
I immediately go back to my game – Fallen City of Karez – knowing now that it is truly an original game.
Cooperative, Competitive or My Style of Gaming
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I wanted FCoK to be something in-between, a real semi co-op game. The theme of raising the city together and standing ground against evil is okay, but still I wanted more than that. I started pushing the players out of their comfort zone – that is, straightforward planning of how to gain more victory points – and forcing them to interact and cooperate with their rival players against the game. Players will need to pull off great political skills as they will have to justify any action that leads to personal gain by making sweetening deals with their worse adversaries.
The second benefit of a semi co-op game is a very cool "catch up" mechanism. In most games, the players in the lowest places are ready to give up at some point, and most games are broken by those reluctant players. In FCoK I managed to cause these players to seek out their own best interest by trying to harm the city progress, thus making everyone lose. This will in turn cause the leading players to team up to save the city, putting aside for a moment their selfish ambitions, and during that time the last player may make a huge leap forward and may even eventually win the game!
Worker Placement Becomes Workforce
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The first thing I wanted to deal with is the whole concept of "ownership" of a player on his workers. I feel that slavery is an ugly mark on the history of modern society and we should oppose it even when it comes to board games. There is no sense in sending workers to do your dirty job just because they have the same color as your token. Aside from that, your moves/actions become predictable as everybody knows (including you) how many moves/workers you have.
So I invented the Workforce. In FCoK there is an old city center where unemployed citizens and eager adventurers amass. Each player will try to attract workers to fit his job demand. The joint pool of workers requires more strategic planning, tactical maneuvers (reacting to unpredictable moves by your rivals), and politics (as many deals can be struck in this crucial phase).
The second thing I changed is the ridiculous assumption that every worker is the same and will do the same work. This concept is unrealistic – unless you have a game in which you can clone your workers. (Hmm, interesting thought...) I set up two classes of "workers" that would fit my fantasy world: the Citizen, a more common worker who works at civic types of jobs and is the core foundation of building a city, and the Adventurer, a glory-seeking, death-wishing and tougher-to-attract "worker", who performs a whole different set of actions.
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The new worker system enabled me to create a unique style of economics and a cool set of actions in various buildings.
More Interaction, or Take on the Dark Side...
In all of my designs I strive to get every player involved in the game with different levels of interaction. To mix things up, I made for each player a unique guild house. Each of those guilds has its own goals and agenda. Players will start acting differently each time they play; they will seek for alliance with any guild that does not share their ambitions.
I started to fall in love with the whole idea of making a dark guild house: the arcane guild. I planned to make this guild house almost as a rebel guild which will cause havoc and chaos in the game, in addition to having a good rivalry with the heroic guild house.
Another desire I wanted to embed in FCoK is the ability for players to decide which side they are on in the classic conflict of good vs. evil. I successfully tested the new private dungeons! This is a special featured action which lets the players compose their own dream private dungeon in order to shake things up and make some gold out of it.
In my first prototype, I made the adventure part of the game use a rock-paper-scissors mechanism. I wanted a fast-paced resolution coupled with fun and strategic planning.
The second goal I intended for this phase was a well-needed icebreaker and brain cooler; the intensive gameplay in the previous phases could make most hardcore gamers winded, and I needed a change in pace so everyone could relax a bit.
However, I realized that simply planning to get the right combos of cards and putting them down on the table made the adventure phase too straightforward and sucked the whole fun out of it. So I went back to the drawing board and started designing a new battle system just for this "minor" phase. I wanted players to be able to leave their old rivalries aside and take part in joyful adventures together, and there's no better way to do that – at least in my opinion – than by rolling a big pile of dice and looking to see whether you got the needed results.
I used my wargame designing experience to compose a well-balanced and luck-controlled dice system. I used my initial rock-paper-scissor system (where I loved the planning and preparing aspects) to create sets of realms for each group of monsters. For example, the Undead realm got the numbers 5 and 6, the Beasts got 3 and 4, etc. This also helped strengthen my theme; a Cleric hero should be good fighting against Undead monsters, for example, so they have a bonus attack hit of 5.
This combat system hit well with my playtests, and I was happy with the fast resolution for the entire adventure phase. It felt good enough thematically as the monsters keep coming at you while you prepare a good combo of potions and weapons to deal with them.
Final Words
I've put four years into making Fallen City of Karez a real innovative game. I hope that my game will get to your table, and that maybe even you will get that little spark in your eyes along with a goofy little smile while playing it.
Elad Goldsteen
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