Praga Caput Regni - Diary

From the my designer’s view, „Praga“ is a second game, where the THEME was the first thing I was thinking about…….

What was at the start of thinking about Prague as the main element of my new game? Maybe it was walking around Prague center a lot of years ago with my friend during my student‘s time. I was born here in this very nice city and wanted to know most of the historical sights more or even less known. I recognized that thanks to unique panoramas of Charles Bridge and Prague Castle is Prague one of the most beautiful cities in the world. These walks and „absorption“ of historical datas about Prague gave me unforgetable memories and experiences.

During following time I was overhelmed by a lot of ordinary family and working joys and worries, walks decreased, but thoughts about our city didn’t leave me J I was interested in reading a lot of books about historical Prague.

When I was designing my first games, I also included HISTORY to the producing process. You can notice it in my first published game League of Six. Despite of the fact, I always thought about czech history as a main theme of my game, Prague was still waiting for its chance…..

After finishing Underwater Cities and its expansion I was founding new themes for my next game. Historical theme - my favourite - was waiting and suddenly I consider that now is the right time to fulfill one of my dreams and design strategical EURO about building my hometown – Royal City of Prague.

In my head there was growing the thought about designing the game in which the main goal will be to build up medieval city during the period of reign of Emperor Charles IV. (1313 – 1378 a.d.). I longed primarily real historical sights and buildings – Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Charles University etc…., which we could visit and admire till now, to be in my game.

Mechanics

Next step was constructing of suitable mechanics which would include as many realities of Prague and events from Charles IV. period as possible. It is obvious that in big EURO this condition will be a result of more or less compromises. In the moment I am writing these letters, the game is already nearly finished and only some corrections of small disbalances in mechanics are done. When I am looking at historical sights now, I am saying to myself….“…why didn’t I put this square on the main board?...why this church is not included in it?...“ But finally I mean that in the game there is quite enough interesting Prague sights.

During the designing proces, I was afraid about connecting the theme and more complex mechanics….I was asking myself….“…would it be possible to bound all together – nice but not simple mechanics and beautiful building theme?...“

The theme includes one of the most famous period of Prague and Czech Kingdom history. In the first half of 14th century the throne was ascended by young and able Luxembourg Charles IV. One of the first steps he did was building up „New Prague City“. Thanks to this Prague – residence of Czech King and Roman Emperor – was one of the 10 largest Cities in Europe. Except of „New Prague City“, there was built also famous Charles Bridge, St. Vitus Cathedral and buildings connected to just founded University.

This historical range provided to me during designing proces a lot of possibilities when the theme could be maintained.

The main goal of the game is building. At the start of the whole process I tried to maintain parts and mechanics, which corresponded with this historical period. You could notice it by looking at the main board where „Old Prague City“ and „New Prague City“ are divided by King’s road. Players also build up City walls, St. Vitus Cathedral and Charles Bridge.

The choosing the action is the main mechanic of the game. (Players are gaining resources helping them to build a Cathedral, Bridge, City and Walls and improving their actions).

During the „modelling“ of particular turns in my head I tried to connect mechanics as much as possible. It was realised by the central mechanic of choosing the actions. My main goal was to make players to choose from different actions and not to focus on one of them and play it the whole time….I thought about it the way that when player chooses some strategy, he has to play it consequently with other mechanics to be succesful. Despite of the fact that the game now seems to be complex and particular mechanics are connected together logically, keeping in my head of playing actions by moving player’s cubes on 3D historical buildings and other processes was the most demanding challenge I ever experienced during designing of my games.

Regarding to the fact, that I like using dices in my games a lot, they were main element of Praga in the first phase of creating the game. Players should throw 3 dices to choose from particular actions and following bonuses.

But after first testing at home with my family I figured out that this is not the best choice of mechanic…I tried to adjust process to be usable and enjoyable enough with dices but it didn’t work. The mechanic was too random to do strategical decisions in this game. It was not good here.

I was faced with a new designer’s experience. In my previous games I’ve determined the main mechanic and then I’ve built other mechanics around it. Central mechanism was sometimes a little bit adjusted to other mechanics but the main principle stayed the same. But now I found out that the Central mechanism doesn’t work!!

I was forced to proceed the way that the secondary thematical mechanics I left the same and the central mechanism was completely changed. I used the one I thought about years ago while designing any other game. It was using the wheel in which tiles with two actions are inserted. On this wheel there are bonuses and there was also possibility to gain more bonuses by taking not so much favourite action tiles….and obligation of paying more resources for taking the best tiles…..players could choose from 2 actions on 1 tile….

This mechanic I adjusted technically to the strategical possibilities of Praga and it finally turned out to be the most suitable central mechanism for this game. From the designer’s point of view I was able to manage this really difficult situation - the need to change the central mechanism – without any major changes of secondary mechanics.

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Praga Caput Regni