But by Jupiter’s Cock it’s long, fiddly, filled with a billion tiny rules, baffling, has a rule book where even the modern version hurts, contains excessive dice rolling, and is basically a crackling example of why the English language board game design of the 1980’s (ok it was published in 1990 which means it was designed in the 80's) got eaten alive when the Germans came along and demonstrated there was a better way.
When two random people asked to join us and take the two empty seats caused by absence we felt it only fair to warn them what they were letting themselves in for but apparently they thought we were joking. They learned – oh yes they learned (one of them did win so don't feel to sorry for them).
If I'm still playing it some 24 years after its release – it must have something going for it – so what is it?
While ‘the co-operative game’ era is often considered to have started with ‘Lord of the Rings’ anybody who has played it will tell you that if you don’t work together in the early republic then the Republic of Rome will chew you up and spit you out. It is in fact intensely unfair given that you can be dead men walking after the first card draw (Hannibal on the first Punic war is basically a death sentence no matter how much you pull together).
Well it’s got detail and authenticity – in an era where theme often feels an afterthought you know these rules were written for fidelity; playability and ease of use be damned!
But that's not enough to make it worth playing - and what it really brings to the table is politicking – the horse trading and arguing over what you are going to do – as you try and walk that fine line between saving Rome and lining your own personal pockets. It's all about what happens once the Senate is open - everything before and after that is just book keeping and clean up to set the sage for the next round of arguing.
While that's the game strong point - I'm not sure the game really helps it self even in the Senate phase. Often there are too few things to argue over, with too much power bundled together in giant packages reducing the amount of horse trading. Veto's exist - and swing from very powerful to pointless (as they can be dodged by making tiny amendments over and over again) - and have no negative consequences for the person vetoing. Throwing your toys out of the pram and bring everything to a grinding halt should be ever present threat, but something that a player is very worried about doing. It’s too easy to side line somebody – just cut them clear out of the process giving them nothing and the game can have a terrible death cycle. Doing badly leads to doing badly as you lack the power and influence to do anything. You will be pulled out of the cycle because you'll be the 'safe' candidate at some point but that might take hours.
Equally the games UI does not do a good job of helping you sort and organise the motions and the results- although the new version at least has a vote tracking wheel so you can see what's votes people have. It's a step in the right direction at least.
Are there modern game that show how you might do it better? There is Article 27 - the game of the UN security council that comes with a gavel that you bang to call a vote and there are no many games that do that.
It's a very abstract game - you get given some random tiles that reflect what issues you care about (military, environment) - sometimes you want a there to be action on an area and some times you don't. The chair sets up a proposal - which will give or take VP's depending on your scoring tiles and then the arguing starts. Those that are happy are in agreement - while those who stand to lose are against. The kicker is that any single player can veto - however it costs them VP's and it also costs the chair VP's the chair is often seeking to find the lowest common denominator position while not being sure what people are about. When they have done enough - gavel comes down - vote happens and if the majority like it and nobody veto's then the scoring conditions are revealed and people see who did well and who did badly.
Sounds complicated to track - but actually the UI of the game helps with screens and voting areas where players can indicate which areas they are happy or unhappy with - which looks like this....
And it takes about an hour and half - which makes it an interesting model to consider if you wanted to make a three hour version of Republic of Rome.
So if you were going to work on a euro Republic of Rome - what would you do?
Well you'd have to have concrete things to discuss rather then abstract issues - which means you'd need some sort of underlying co-op game style system that you are battling/puzzling up against. One that is not actually that hard if you did it as a true co-op - but where unresolved issues have a way of biting you all in the arse.
You'd make sure that there were a lot of issues/rewards on the table each time - and that each player had a hand of secret agendas that would give them a bonus depending on what happened. So that province might not look good to you - but if he's got an income boasting card then it might be a reward not a punishment.
You'd need a good UI - that meant that what ever was up for voting would be clear and obvious to everybody.
You'd want voting to be a more dynamic process - the words 'me and you can outvote them both on everything so what are we doing' is the death knell of fun.
You'd try and keep the action focused in the Senate - make the rest of the game as minimalist as possible. So each player quickly does some stuff (like drawing cards for themselves or for the table)- and then onto the arguing. Minimal decisions or dice rolling to be done either side of the senate - the important stuff is in the Senate (although there would be some because you'd want a random factor in deciding battles). So specifically you'd split the single deck of cards into two - one with cards for players hands and one with cards for the table. The table cards would contain issues, wars, and events all bundled up together.
You might want to get rid of the 'people' that Republic of Rome has - and just make each player 'a faction'. I'm torn on that - they add a lot of flavour and theme - but they also add a lot of fiddling around.
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