Designer Diary: Furmation of Rome | BoardGameGeek News

I’m Jon from Malaysia, and Furmation of Rome is my first published game under my own company, <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepublisher/55504/npips-games“>nPips games. Before you stop reading because cats+Rome doesn’t mix, give me a chance to justify myself through the one-year journey I am about to share with you.

The Conception

In 2023, after getting my own booth at an event to demo my games that were in various stages of development, I came to realize that I wanted to sell a product, not just demo them. The week after that, I had set a goal for myself to attend the event again next year with my first published game for sale.

I gathered a few mechanisms that I enjoy playing and that at the same time are easy for the non-hobby gamer crowd to understand, specifically area majority and set collection. These mechanisms are easy to teach and give you a sense of gratification when you look at your own side of the table at game‘s end. They also give players a sense of fighting over something, yet at the same time they don’t turn off players who dislike take-that games.

Taking inspiration from games such as Hanamikoji and Startups, I made a two-player game that utilizes the familiar area-control feel but with added card abilities. It took me a week to knock up an idea, research, create twenty-ish card abilities, and a prototype.

Alpha Stage

Your goal is to have the majority of each class at game‘s end, with the game having five classes. On your turn, you can either play a card in front of you or use the ability of a card in hand, then discard it. After playing a card, you draw a card from the open market; this gives your opponent an idea of which cards you have in hand if they are tracking such things.

With a hand of three cards, you can ideally avoid analysis paralysis while retaining a good number of options from which to choose. The open market also has three face-up cards available for the choosing, with no option to draw from the top of the deck to keep the market flowing.

The design was a low complexity game, and having one action per turn keeps the game snappy, with the unique card effects giving the game tactical depth.

Alpha prototype, two players

After the first playtest, I found that the card abilities were not balanced; some cards were weaker than others, with nothing game-breaking yet — just underwhelming.

Following the mantra from my friend — “If everything is overpowered, nothing is overpowered” — I buffed the card abilities and removed conditional abilities such as those with “ifs” to make them easier to use.

The game became more swingy, but the card abilities were being used more — which serves the intended purpose of giving players the dilemma of either using card abilities or scoring area majority.

After many more playtests and card ability adjustments, I was ready to expand the game to three and four players.

Alpha prototype, four players

I had a brilliant idea to make the three- and four-player gameplay feel a little different. In a three-player game, monuments are included, and they score you an additional 1 point at the end of the game if you fulfill the requirements stated on the card. This is a mini set-collection side quest, an alternative way to score points.

This was primarily done to decrease the likelihood of ties occurring. It is easy to tie in a three-player game since two players are likely to hold the majority of two classes, leaving the third player with only a one-class majority. Adding this scoring mechanism will disrupt the 5 point game structure; ties will still happen, but are less likely.

In a four-player game, a new class was added to the mix, bringing the game to a total of six classes and eight monuments. It is debatable whether the idea of having two-, three-, and four-player counts playing differently from each other was a good idea. I see it as a way to keep the game fresh when you are playing it at different player counts.

Beta Stage

After a lot more playtesting, something was brought to my attention: Securing the rank 1 class was a no-brainer move.

Here’s a bit of context on the rank 1 class. Each class has their own rank: Patrician is rank 1, Clergy is rank 2, Legionary is rank 3, and so on. This was important because when there was a tie at the end of the game, whoever has the majority of the highest-ranking class wins, which has led to Patricians being a no-brainer choice.

This caused the game to be slightly imbalanced, which to me was fine because the Patricians have stronger card abilities with fewer copies in the game. However, the bigger problem was players always drafting the Patricians from the market first because that was the obvious move — not to mention an emerging strategy to tie the game after securing the Patrician majority.

I had to find a way to keep the card abilities balanced as they were, while making the higher-ranked cards not be the obvious choice when drawing from the market.

Beta prototype, two players

Turning to Hanamikoji and Startups again, I studied how they keep each “faction” relevant. Both games have a varied number of cards in each faction and a token to represent who got the majority of a certain faction first. That token was the key to stopping card ties from occurring at the end of the game, which was the strategy experienced players were using.

I added tokens to the game. The player who has a clear majority of the class will gain control of the token; the player who has the most tokens wins. This added weight to the lower-ranked classes, while keeping the card abilities the same. In some cases, giving up the higher-ranked tokens to use their abilities to secure multiple lower-ranked tokens became a viable strategy.

One more thing that changed in a four-player game was the Brigands. They can be played only onto an opponent’s area, and its token is worth -1 point at game‘s end. This slight take-that mechanism helps reduce the chances of ending in a tie, and it also increases player interaction on the table.

The game was quite robust after the changes, being easy to teach and fast to play. You had access to card abilities to get out of a sticky situation, as well as card abilities to gain a massive turn. This made the game a little swingy if all players are at an equal footing.

Expansions?

My initial plan was to have a two-player game with a 3-4 player expansion to give players a cheaper option for my game in the hope that it would be easier to drive sales.

However, I was convinced by my fellow friends to not do this. Players would prefer to buy one complete game instead of having to pay for two games. It was also cheaper to manufacture one thousand copies of a 2-4 player game than one thousand copies of a streamlined base game and five hundred copies of the expansion.

Art Direction

Now to address the question from before: Why cats? Does it have anything to do with the theme? The answer is no. From the mechanisms of the game down to the price point, everything was deliberate and taken into account, even the cats.

Furmation of Rome production version

I decided to first try the Malaysian market before venturing out to the wider international audience. With that said, cats were the safest bet. A cartoon bald philosopher will not attract the attention of the public over here, but a cat in a toga might.

The cute and friendly art appeals to the wider public; it reflects the low-complexity gameplay, while the seriousness from the Roman theme hints that you will be fighting over something. The name “Furmation of Rome” was intentionally named similar to the game Foundations of Rome as a nod from me to board gamers who happen to come across my game.

The Present Day

You can find the game only in Malaysia for now, except for the few review copies I sent overseas. The 2024 <a href="https://www.origame.co/asian-board-games-festival” target=”_blank” class=”postlink” rel=”nofollow noreferrer noopener”>Asian Board game Festival that takes place November 22-24 in Singapore will be the first time I’m demoing the game outside of my home country. If you happen to be there, please drop by and say hi.