Designer's Comments

16th Century religious wars

This sort of built on my 1494 game and looked at the relationships and rivalries between states across Europe, just at the time when Martin Luther was launching the reformation. So there was: dynastic struggle, religious strife, warfare, politics and birth, deaths & marriages. The time frame of four years per turn meant that I could cover some 24 years, a sufficient length of time in which players would grow older (and possibly die), get married and have children. So why not do it in a game. I drew out family trees for the prominent families of the period to the starting point of 1517 and allowed the players to arrange marriages for themselves and their relatives, marriages which resulted (in most cases) in children. And the players went for this in a big way.

The religious strife between protestants and catholics involved religious debates as well as politics and warfare. Some players could change their faith but most couldn’t. This aspect also built on the systems developed for Habsburg Ascendant.

The structure was also another example of why it’s difficult to define megagames: many players belonged to more than one ‘team. So a cardinal in France belonged to the French team and the Papal team. A German prince would be a part of the Holy Roman Empire team, the German Princes team and possibly the Luther or Calvinist teams.

This is undoubtedly my favourite of all the games I’ve designed as it covers so many aspects. Possibly I could do an alternative history version and shoe-horn in alchemy (weird science) and Cthulhu sub-games but that would be it!

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