by Marc M, 15 April 2023
In his 2015 game Tetrarchia, Miquel Marqués cast players in roles of co-emperors defending the Roman Empire. Now, publisher Draco Ideas has started a Gamefound campaign for Hispania, a new game from Marqués set in the second century BC.
Hispania will be a one- to three-player cooperative game with enough difficulty variations (243!) to appeal to new and seasoned gamers alike. In Hispania, players will go on the offensive, planning and working together with limited resources and limited time to conquer the Iberian Peninsula for Rome. I recently had the chance to ask Marqués about his new game.
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It sounds like Hispania will inherit some of the mechanics of your earlier game Tetrarchia. What worked for Hispania and what did you have to adapt?
When I design wargames I keep in mind two keywords: abstraction and feeling. Both seem contradictory, and indeed somehow they are, but that only makes the challenge more interesting! The game must be easy to play, without the burden of complex rules, but it must feel like the war it depicts, the players must experience the dilemmas the leading characters went through. I had achieved this goal with Tetrarchia, a game in which the players cooperate handling Diocletian and the other three co-emperors that defended the Roman Empire from revolts and Barbarian invasions in the III century.
The main abstract mechanics worked also in Hispania. Point-to-point movement, generic Roman/Barbarian meeples and discs, action points, Roman/Barbarian dice to govern combat and system behavior, difficulty table… However, what in Tetrarchia did feel like an agonic defense against unexpected attacks, in Hispania had to feel like a daring incursion into hostile territory. I adapted combat and the system behavior, introduced sieges and coins, complemented movement with sea links and Roman roads… As a result, despite the more uniform game area, the game has become more dynamic and strategic. And most importantly, it feels like the Roman conquest!
In Hispania there’s a lot of underlying complexity: city defenses, terrain effects, combat factors, naval transport and more, all based in history. How difficult was it to work this complexity into a game that’s simple to learn?
As I said, most of the work had been done in Tetrarchia. Now, simple mechanics already successful had to be adapted and completed with a few more, although following the same philosophy. Simplifying a given mechanic is straightforward. For example, the links connecting cities have 1, 2 or 3 segments, depending on the nature of the terrain they cover, and moving through them costs just 1 point (coin) per segment, you don’t need movement tables or abilities. You can place or remove your garrisons for 1 coin each. Your combat value is the roll of your own die, but you can add your neighboring garrisons and/or multiply x2 if another meeple supports you. And so on.
The difficult part is putting these simple pieces together and making the whole engine work. Each action should be simple, and thus easy to remember, but combining them should lead to many possible outcomes, which must leave room for strategy if you want the game to be interesting. I need some randomness in my games, to avoid players learning some deterministic openings or ends, but I need them to feel the ability to control the randomness. On one hand you must give them the tools, and on the other you need some luck and/or intuition, to find the most interesting connection between the parts. In both Tetrarchia and Hispania I think that luck and intuition played similar parts.
What games or game designs have been most influential in creating the mechanics for Hispania?
There are two games that in fact have very little to do with Hispania, but that inspired me in finding two core ingredients I needed. The first one is Flash Point Fire Rescue, the game by Kevin Lanzing in which a team of firefighters cooperate to put out a fire inside a house. The second one is Red November, the game by Bruno Faidutti in which fictitious gnomes cooperate to put out a fire inside a submarine. In fact, answering this question I realize for the first time how much those two games have in common!
From Flash Point I adapted the two-dice mechanic spreading the fire. Every turn, after a firefighter had tried to extinguish fire, the dice were rolled and provided the coordinates of the house in which you would place smoke, fire or an explosion. It seems random at first, but when you play you realize that the location is random but that you have your word on its consequences through the decisions you made in your turn. For me this game was about “controlling chaos”, which is the sensation real firefighters feel. And it was the sensation I wanted the Romans to feel, so I thought about two dice, Roman and Hispanic, that would provide the coordinates of a city in which revolt or armies would appear.
From Red November I adapted the time mechanic. In order to succeed an attempt, gnomes have to roll with a d10 a number lower or equal than the minutes they choose to spend on it. Therefore, you can take all your time if you don’t want to take risks during crucial attempts, but you will pay the price of time running out faster. In Hispania you can add to your combat value (die plus neighboring garrisons) coins, that represent your action points. Therefore, you can spend more coins in decisive combats, but at the price of not doing other things. And in the end the Hispaniards will make you pay for it…
I read in your bio that you started designing in part so you could play games on topics that interested you but weren’t available. How has that motivation persisted in your most recent games?
Once I started publishing games a few years ago, a hobby of toying around with half-finished ideas became one of designing complete games, which is a very different experience. Nevertheless, I found myself applying the same principle: if a good game on that subject already exists, I should not waste my time making just another one. For example, I’m a nuclear physicist and a few years ago I wrote a book on the Manhattan Project, which made me feel like designing a game on it. But soon after that I found the game The Manhattan Project, by Brandon Tibbetts, and I didn’t think I could do any better, so I stopped.
Tetrarchia and Hispania fill gaps of games that don’t exist. Both historical periods are very little covered in the hobby, and wargames in general with simple mechanics, cooperative but that can be played solitaire as well are very rare. That was the main motivation that pushed me to start both design processes. Of course, then I needed mechanics and so on, but the starting point of the motivation comes first. Life is short, so I try to be very strict in the casting of future projects. Before deciding to spend several months, or a few years, on it I need it to be something worth the try. I don’t design games for a living, so it could well be that the design reaches a dead end, that’s ok, but I need to anticipate a significant chance of success.
What’s the next game you’re planning?
I have several in mind! But it is hard to really choose one and start developing it with all the work around Hispania going on. Once I do I will communicate about it, but until then let me just evoke some candidates. In the style of Tetrarchia and Hispania I have two ideas, one earlier in history (with a hybrid cooperative/competitive mode) and one much later. I also have a World War 2 idea of a very abstract game, but I have to check whether it will feel like WW2. I also have two sport ideas, of tennis and soccer, but the audience of boardgames about sports is very small, and therefore those would be difficult to publish. In the end I will let my intuition make the final call, and then see if my luck makes the rest!
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