.thumbnail.jpg "Fancy version of the board")
Designed by Isaiah Tanenbaum
First conceived: 3/25/08 // Latest revision: 12/7/08
Players: 1-6, working co-operatively
Playtime: ~45 minutes
Overview
“Pompeii!” simulates the sudden and catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24-25, 79 C.E. The ensuing rain of volcanic ash obliterated the city of Pompeii, as well as its sister city of Herculaneum. Nobody knows the total killed, but there were perhaps 30,000 people living at the foot of Vesuvius at the time of the eruption.
As Roman leaders, can you shepherd citizens to safety? Use your skills well, work as a team, and you will be rewarded with everlasting honor, glory, and pride. Fail, and join Pompeii itself, doomed to be buried in history forever!
The rules are attached in Word format, along with a simplified version of the board for playtesting purposes. This is my first official design and I'm really eager to hear your thoughts. In particular I've been waffling a lot on the size of the board. I want things to get pretty messy, but I don't want to overwhelm the players from the first round.
Note that initial starting positions have yet to be set; the only two that are certain are that the Commoner should start in the south-west corner of Pompeii, which is the largest city on the board. and the Historian should start somewhere on the board leading off the western edge of the map.
Comments
I'd prefer
a more stylised board - more map-like. Is the current board based on a satellite photo?
Priestess AP
Interesting design! The influence of Pandemic was clear even before reading the credits at the end of the rules.
In general, I really like the thematic descriptions of the roles and their special abilities and restrictions. The rules were kind of fun to read, for this reason.
I think you may have trouble with the Priestess role: I can see her Eruption phases taking a long time, while she tries to figure out the absolute best arrangement of her tiles. You might need to simplify her power: have her draw one tile at a time, as usual, but allow her to hold one tile in hand. That is: on any tile draw, if she is not already holding a tile, she may choose to place the drawn tile or hold it. If she is already holding a tile, she may choose which of the two to place: the held tile, or the drawn tile; and she continues to hold the one not placed. When she reaches the final tile placement, she must place the held tile if she has one; otherwise draw and place a tile as usual.
To make it even simpler: she can choose one tile to hold, and then must simply place the held tile as the last tile of her Eruption phase.
Since I haven't played the game, I don't know how many tiles typically get drawn during a "busy" Eruption phase. If it's no more than three, then there really isn't a problem. Any more than that (and somehow I get the feeling there could be a lot more than that!) and you are going to want to cut back the Priestess some, I think. For six tiles (for example), I think making five decisions between two tiles each is going to be quicker than choosing one of 6! = 720 possible arrangements.
Priestess and Map
Thanks for the comments!
Map: Yes, it is based on a satellite map; that is, in fact, Vesuvius on the bottom layer of the "fancy" version. Eventually I would like to work with a stylized board, but following some excellent advice passed down from designers with more experience, I am trying to avoid creating any component that's so pretty I grow attached to it. The roads, for instance, are completely un-playtested right now and may or may not be balanced; likewise with the city placement (although Pompeii and Herculaneum are more or less stuck if I hew to their historical positions).
Actually, one of the big love-my-prototype-too-much problems I'm having right now is that I'm using these really cool 2"-diameter clay floor tiles that I picked up in Home Depot. This makes the board very large -- 30" across, plus a bit around the sides. I should probably ditch them and print (or purchase) 1.5" diameter paper/posterboard tiles, which would also be easier to transport -- those clay things are HEAVY! On the other hand, the large scale makes you feel like there's actually an epic disaster taking place on the table; this was always a problem I had with Pandemic's small-ish board, as opposed to, say, the grand sweep of my Ticket to Ride: Europe map. Also, I don't have to cut out a hundred hex tiles, which would suck.
Priestess: Good call! Since the standard difficulty starts you with three trajectories, and they're more likely to split than to be blocked or to end (there's a tile or two that just stops the flow in its tracks), a "busy" Eruption Phase might have upwards of six. In some earlier drafts of the game the board was significantly larger* and there were a lot of "multiplier" tiles, so that some Eruption phases had as many as ten open trajectories!** Even assuming that many of the tiles she might draw are the same, or at least functionally so, and that I've reduced the number of multiplier tiles, the Priestess is almost certainly overpowered right now and I will implement your suggestion asap, although I still want to give her a little more leeway to make the role nice and juicy. How about this?
"Divine Intervention: Unlike other players, the Priestess has some control over the volcano. During her Eruption Phase, rather than placing an Ash Tile on the map, she may instead place it in her hand, drawing another, up to a maximum hand size of two. For a future placement during this Phase, she may select a tile from her hand rather than drawing one from the pile. All tiles in her hand must be placed by the end of the Phase, which moves clockwise starting with Mt. Vesuvius’ red arrow, as normal. If killed, the Priestess places tiles during her Eruption Phase like any other player."
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*How large? Originally 12 hexes to a side, which meant 25 hexes in diameter! That board looked great on the computer screen, but, as you can imagine, would never work in real life, even with smaller hexes. I think the current board may actually be too small -- in three or four rounds Pompeii and Herculaneum will already be nearly destroyed. Maybe 10 hexes per side?
**This is aesthetically troublesome as well as cumbersome; it ended up with two thirds of the map almost completely covered with ash, ending only when tiles ran out. Instead, I want pockets of isolated survivors here and there, and chances for some tense back-to-back Eruption Phases when players reach the edge of the board or the tiles all block each-other. More tweaking will continue as I find a way to ensure this (ahistorical but more fun) situation occurs more often than not.