The Making of Trials of Sensibility and Skulls

In an earlier post (located here) I mentioned that for my Game Design and Production I class we were required to make a prototype board game about a Jane Austen book and pirates. Now I know many of you are probably wondering what Jane Austen (if you are even aware of who she is, if not refer here for more information) and pirates has to do with Game Design (trust me you are not alone in this belief, many people in my class already freaked out and complained about this, while accepted the challenge since it catered to my inner literature nerd) but this assignment forced us to think a little differently in our approach to making our board games. 

Now my group (which originally consisted of the girls of game Dev but our friend Clement didn't have a group so we let him join us for this one) was originally going to choose Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (more information on the book is found here) but when we designing out game we decided to change books to Sense and Sensibility (more information on the book is found here) since some of us liked that novel better and because most people we talked to in our class were doing Pride and Prejudice and we didn't want to be similar to them.

 

The Beginning of Our Design:

 

 At first we weren't sure exactly how and what you would have to collect in our game that could be related to Jane Austen, but after extensive discussion we were able to figure out what the players what have to collect on order to be crowned the victor and that is a relationship (I bet all of you are thinking what on earth are we smoking, how can collect a relationship, I will explain it soon so don't worry, and what does that have to do with Jane Austen, if you are thinking this you have clearly never read her works).

 Our Design Meeting:

 Now that we had chosen our book, we had to choose what type of game we were making and our professor had mentioned a few things he wanted / expected, that he did not want a Race to the End game ( they are the easier way out and totally last week). Unsure of how a Territorial Acquisition game would work with a Jane Austen novel, we didn't really think that type of game too much and started to look at a type of game we haven't had a chance to explore in class or our assignments yet, a collection game (For anyone who is wondering what a collection game is I will post a blog in a few days about this type of game, so please be a little patient).

The Designing of Our Game:

Now Sense and Sensibility follows the lives and loves of the Dashwood Sisters, Elinor and Marianne (see how the relationships are important in the book now?) and we wanted to stay true to the plot (which was a request, more like a requirement, given to us by Dr. Nacke) so we decided that the players would play as one of the sisters and would have to collect relationship/ event cards in order to develop their romantic relationships with their respective infatuations. In order to decide who wins the game, we decided that you need to collect more of your respective character's cards than your opponent however this was changed slightly to include a points system to make the game more interesting.

The Designing of the Board and Cards:

When designing our board we decided that we wanted to make the board in an oval or circular shape (we ended up deciding on the oval shape as the final shape) since we wanted to change the board shape up from the regular, expected square/ rectangular shape of most boards. We decided to use foam board as the main material as it is a more sturdy and durable material which served our purpose. Originally we planned to cut out the oval shape however we ran into some issues when we had to cut the board out (The main issue that really interfered with our plan was the fact that we accidentally painted the board first before we cut out the shape. Knowing that if we made a mistake when cutting it would be next to near impossible to fix, we decided not to take that risk.).

 The Designing of the Character Pieces:

Since Sense and Sensibility follows the lives and romance of 2 of the 3 Dashwood sisters, During our design discussions we had decided that our game would be a two game; Players can play as either Elinor or Marianne and must develop their character's respective relationships with their respective men. Originally we had decided that if 4 people wanted to play, then they would play in teams of 2 however during play testing we realized that it was a little boring so we scrapped the idea.

 The Drawing of the Board:

Before we started painting or outlining anything on our board, Our Board Designer, Evelyn quickly sketched out her design in pencil, by doing this we were able to fix any sizing issues that had and were able to plan out what squares go where (I'm really glad we did this before w e painting because if we needed to make corrections to the board design it would be a lot harder to do with paint down).

Designing the Cards:

   While Evelyn was designing the board, the rest of us took a look at some objects found in Sense and Sensibility in order to figure out how to incorporate them into our game. We did this by creating object cards that you can pick up throughout the board, some objects that can be found are a lock of Marianne's hair (Which in that time was suppose to be a romantic act between lovers, however I think it's kind of weird), which Chrystal made very elegantly and efficiently. The objects can either help progress you/ set you back in movement  throughout the board or help you gather relationship cards. In addition to object card (as well as our attempt to stay true to the plot of the novel) we added Relationship cards for each character, which develop the girl's romance with their respective infatuations, which Keerthana made very artistic and efficiently with edits and assembly done by Zee.

The Writing of the Rules:

 

After creating the cards and deciding what their purpose was in the game, Clement (Who isn't pictured because he didn't want any so he would continuously move out of the way) sat down a flushed out the rules on set up, game play, and battling. After Clement finished writing the rules Zee quickly looked over and edited some that were slightly inaccurate (mostly because we changed them when we realized that they weren't working well while play testing it). For a full overview of our rules you can find them below:

Trials of Sensibility and Skulls

Game dev girls + 1

Objective

You start at Dock Sussex, where pirate captain Dashwood has recently died; Of scurvy.  He hated eating vegetables.  His successor suspicious of crewmembers trying to usurp his position has banished anybody with the power to do so.  Marianne and Elinor are included in these banished crewmembers and now find themselves  traversing the lands and seas plundering as they see fit while trying to find a person worth their time to settle down with.

The main objective of the game is to score as high as a relationship score as possible by the end of the game.  This is achieved by collecting relationship cards.  In the event that the scores are identical, the amount of treasures hoarded during your adventure of glamour and love will be used to settle the score.

Set-up

1. The game is played with two players; one player plays as Marianne and the other as Elinor.
2. Place the Object cards, Marianne and Elinor relationship cards in their respective spots face down on the board.
3. To determine which player goes first roll 1 D6, the player with the highest roll goes first.
4. Both players start in the green space and continue forward, choosing a direction if the paths split.

Playing the game

1. Roll a dice to see how many spaces you can go.
2. If you land on a relationship tile, draw from the relationship pile that corresponds to your character's.  Do the same for an object tile.
3. Resources are gained through object cards.  Object cards are used immediately and turn into resource cards afterwards.  If you lose a turn(s) from that object card it cannot be counted as a resource; discard it after use. If you draw an object card you cannot use, (i.e. Draw from opposing character’s relationship pile) reshuffle it into the object deck.
4. If you land on the same tile as another player, a battle is fought and the loser will have to give up a random resource card if they have one.
5. The game doesn’t end until all players reach the endpoint. The winner is determined by tallying up the score.  Relationship cards are worth 1 point each.  In the event of a tie resource points are used for the tie-breaker.  Each object card is worth 1 point unless otherwise stated in rule 3 of this section.

Battling

A battle is fought either through cannon, net, spear (rock, paper, scissors) or by rolling dice.  The person who was on the tile first gets to pick the choice of battle.

  The Board Design:

Once the board design was completed,  the cards were designed and made, Evelyn and I relocated to paint the board and make the Character pieces, since the study room we commandeered (Ahaha see what I did there) wasn't the best place to paint.

 The Making of the Character Pieces:

The Completed Character Pieces:

The Character pieces were designed to somewhat represent pictures and picture frames, with both the shape and design of the pieces. The Pieces were made out of foam board and coloured with markers, as well as covered the backs and sides with black paper.

The Making of the Board:

We decided on a very bright, soft and cool colour palette for our board, and tried to avoid using clashing colours which could be distracting during game play. Each square on the is a different colour which has a specific meaning when playing. Below is a quick explanation of what each colour is:

• Blue - These are normal movement squares
• Purple- These are relationship card squares, Players must pick up their character's specific relationship card
• Yellow- These are object card square, Players must pick up an object card and must follow any instructions on them
• Green  - This is the start square
• Red - This is the finish square

 Adding the Finishing Touches:

We added the name of our game, sections for the cards to be placed, a duel area for battles and a legend (Unfortunately the legend was not included on the picture below, we actually almost forgot about it since it wasn't as important as the other pieces).

 The Finished Product:

MY THOUGHTS:

This assignment was quite an interesting and fun challenge that taught my group and I that when making a game you do not necessarily need to have similar or nearly identical themes or topics. Sometimes you can take two totally different ideas, like Jane Austen's Sense and sensibility and Pirates, combine them and make them work. It was an interesting assignment that forced us (even if we liked it or not) to explore something many of the people in my program have little to no knowledge about. I think it was a great experience because when you are game designer you may be required to make a game on something you do not know or understand, or two things that don not seem to work well with each other.