Prototype #1 - Jane Austen and Pirates

Name: Pirate Pride & Pirate Prejudice
Number of Players: 2 or 4



Map:

Objective:

                    It is a victory-points-based game; the first player who collects 6 event cards wins the game. There should 1 or 2 players on each team, Elizabeth & Darcy or Pirate Pride & Pirate Prejudice, and the teams' size should be equal.



How to Play:

                    All players start from the 4 red blocks at the corners of the center. 2 players would be one on a corner and another player on the opposite corner. Players take turns to roll 2 6-sided dices to move, and can go straight forward and only turn when the road ends. It is up to players to decide whether they want to go clockwise or counter-clockwise when they start, however, they can not change direction after unless being affected to do so.

                    Once the game starts, players draw 3 events cards from the event card pile and display them to  all players. The event cards stay display in the game until someone fulfills the requirement by collecting characters who would attend any one of those 3 events. Once a player has all the characters required for the event, he/ she gets the event cards. Then shuffle the other 2 event cards into the event card pile, and the character cards back to the character card pile. This applies to other players too; every player has to shuffle his/ her character cards back into the pile once an event card is completed by a player.



Tile:

                    In order to obtain event card, player needs to obtain character cards. Character cards can be obtain but paying certain amount of coin when player lands on a red block, the post-office block.

Red Block: Player who lands on this block gets to draw 5 cards from the character card pile, and he/ she can buy any character within those 5 cards. Any card that is not purchased has to return and shuffle back into the character card pile.

                    In order to buy character cards, players need to land on yellow block, the coin block, or the grey-green block, the opportunity block, to get coins.

Yellow Block: Player who lands on this block gets 2 coins.

Green Block: Player who lands on this block gets to draw 1 card from the opportunity card pile. Some card effects might be beneficial such as receive coins or move forward.

                    For people who get confused or TL; DR, here is the flowchart to explain the procedure of the game in order to win. Starting from bottom, rolling the dices. Then by any chance to land on yellow or green block to get coins. Then by any chance to purchase character cards according to the event cards that are on display. Lastly, obtain the event card by collect all required characters. Whenever you obtain the 6th event card, you win the game.

Card:

Role Card:

                    Before game starts, each player draws a card to determine his/ her team. It is not necessary if players have decided teams already. Role cards are 1 Elizabeth and 1 Darcy as one team, and 1 Pirate Prejudice and 1 Pirate Pride as another team.

Opportunity Card:

                    Above image is the template of opportunity card. An opportunity card is in effect immediately when a player lands on a green block. Its effect might target single player, a specific player, or all player.

Character Card:

                    

                    Above image is one of the character cards. The top states the name of the character; the silhouette icon represents the gender of the character and the box contains information in relation to other characters in the novel. On the final version for prototype, price is listed at the bottom right corner.

                    Players can purchase character card when they land on the red block. All character has expired  time period, which is 5 rounds. After 5 rounds, player has to pay the same amount of money in order to keep the character for another 5 rounds. If 5 rounds are over and player does not pay or does not have enough coin to pay, the character card goes back to the character card pile and shuffle.

Event Card:



                    An event card is display somewhere around the map for player. On the card, it briefly describes the event and the characters who participate in the event. Players need to have all character cards listed on the event card in order to obtain it.

Concepts & Ideas:

                    This time is a little bit different than the previous ones, because not only we have to convert a novel into a board game, we also need to implement new element into the game, which are pirates. This makes the task becomes challenging.

                    First of all, since it is a novel-based board game, we have to somehow tell the story to the players and it has to stay true at the same time. Therefore, we decide to make it victory points based game. The reason is player can only win when they go through a certain amount of content in the game. This way, we can make sure player has received at least certain amount of information no matter how long the game is. 

                    In order to achieve what we expect in the game, we add character cards into it. So players can grasp all the information they need to know about the novel. For example, the cards can help demonstrating the relationship between characters, how they interact with each other characters in different event. By setting the rules to collect event cards to win, they have to understand what is going on and take action in the game. This again brings players closer to novel even if they have not read it before. Lastly, to make it more interesting as a board game, we add opportunity card and in-game currency system to make it more competitive between players and interesting to play.

Artwork:

                    Since I make almost all art assets, I will briefly go through why the art is done this way. 

                    First of all, I thought about adopting the art styles in 1800s to match with the time period of the novel. The most popular one would be neoclassicism, and painting was the major media used in this movement. We want to stay original but it would take lots of time to recreate similar art style. Then, we tried to establish a different art style, however, instead of projecting our imagination of what the characters would look like, we changed it to silhouette. One of the major reasons why is I noticed that Jane Austen does not always describe much about characters' appearance, and I did not want to ruin how players/ readers project the characters in their head. So I decided to go with a simpler art style. Also, considering the time and the amount of content we have in our game, it would be much easier to do the art this way. So we can save more time on the game design, to make the game better and balance.

                    I also used the themes in the novel to name the cards, such as Love, Courtship, Reputation, Journey, Class, and Jealousy. This way, it brings more content from the novel into the board game. Players who never red Pride and Prejudice can have a general idea of what kind of novel it would be about, and players who read the book before can draw more connection to the novel while they are playing the game.

                    One thing I want to point out in the design of opportunity card and the card "JEALOUSY". It is a card with a left eye looking, and basically refers to the green eye monster mentioned in Shakespeare's works, which represents jealousy. Therefore, I made opportunity cards all green because of this card, as a salute to Shakespeare's literature. 

Implement of Pirate:

                    After we designed everything, we had to put pirates into the game too, so here it goes. Firstly, since there are 2 pirates, we name them Pirate Pride and Pirate Prejudice, which generates from the novel. Besides just a name of them, it also symbolizes the pride and prejudice that Elizabeth and Darcy have in the novel and eventually they get together through all the obstacle and differences. So it is the same thing when player Elizabeth and player Darcy's objective is to go through the events in the novel in order to be together, and player Pirate Pride and player Prejudice's objective is to stop Elizabeth and Darcy to search for true happiness by collecting the event and ruin it from them.

                    On the other hand, we come up with a system of "purchasing characters from the store", which sounds ridiculous and would not happen in the novel at all. In order to stay true to the story, we call the red block "The Post-Office Block". It is because in 1800's, people communicates with letter. So it is much more reasonable to say "player Elizabeth and player Darcy can pay in the post-office to write invitation letter to character to participate the event with them," since Elizabeth and Darcy attend almost all events in the novel and "player Pirate Pride and player Pirate Prejudice can pay in the post-office to write blackmail letter to character who could participate the event, and once they have blackmail enough characters, the event would not be the same for Elizabeth and Darcy, hence their ending changes." This is one of the reasons why we set the game this way; it is to make sense with pirates being in the story with other characters. We hope people who play this game can feel and understand the novel while have fun playing with it.