A Star is Born – and a Heart, and a Black Misery Drop, and a Green Book

I have an exciting announcement to make to my readers today – so exciting that it calls for the first-ever embedded image on exlibrismagnis! How exciting is that?

Forty years ago I thought of designing a board game based on the novels, novellas, and stories of Dickens. The idea was that each player would play one of the lead characters from a novel – David Copperfield, for instance, or Florence from Dombey and Son – and would slowly acquire acquaintances, employers, friends, love interests, and enemies in the form of cards representing other characters from perhaps other novels or stories. Each card would correspond to a page in a book that told all the possible actions that that character might take, the current action being determined by a die roll.

Twenty-five years later, the card game Dominion appeared, and the deck-building game came into the world. I was ahead of my time in conception but abysmally behind my time in practical application. So the creative thoughts began flitting again: maybe, as in these new deck-builders, all the necessary information and possible actions could be printed on the card itself. But still, what information would I need? What would a card look like? How would this game go? How could I test anything without cards? But how could I make cards without knowing what the game was like? How could I do any of it without beginning to reread the novels while taking careful notes on every character that appeared?

Three years ago, I realized that if I didn’t get started soon, I would get a chance, long before any game actually materialized, to ask Dickens himself face-to-face how he would have designed it. (It’s highly probable that, in that blessed state, neither of us will care enough about board games to hold the conversation.) So two years ago, I worked for a while and came up with a card design, based on measurements and specifications from a custom game printing company. Last year, I took careful notes (all arranged systematically on a spreadsheet) while reading Great Expectations and filled in a few cards. This past winter, I reread some more and added a page in my spreadsheet for almost 100 characters from Our Mutual Friend. Then I laid out card designs for about 30 of those characters and filled out a few more from Great Expectations. A couple of months ago I uploaded the designs to the printer, and a few weeks ago they arrived. And now, my friends, like a very proud papa, I show you a picture of a sample of this first draft!

Almost all the illustration come from nineteenth-century editions of the books. I had to borrow a few from novels by Trollope and Thackeray, but their all Victorian. The mechanics of the printed text aren’t very consistent: remember that I don’t really know how this game is actually played. But essentially, most characters provide either red hearts (love and emotional support), yellow stars (action and practical aid), black drops (misery), or green books (eccentric qualities). Some characters just do what they do, but many will attempt to do useful things only if you have the hearts or stars to pay for the action. Some Dickens characters don’t provide exactly love and don’t make practical contributions but are absolutely essential to the atmosphere of a Dickens story; these provide the green books, which a player can spend to improve the chances of success on any heart or star action.

Speaking of atmosphere, it’s important to me that every card have a description taken from the original text, which should be read aloud whenever the card is first acquired, and, if possible, a quotation of something the character says. Sometimes you’ll play a card and find that all you get out of it is being able to read the quotation aloud. Take John Podsnap, for instance, one of the cards featured in the picture. Podsnap never attempts anything; he simply is what he is. So his actions cost nothing; the player simply rolls two dice whenever the card is played. Should no “successes” be rolled (a success being defined as a 4, 5, or 6), the player reads the quotation: “We know what England is. That’s enough for us.” If one success is rolled, the player should read aloud (and preferably act out, as well) the indicated action – also taken from, if not exactly quoted from, the original text: “He clears the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him with a flourish of his right arm.” Actions like this have nothing to do with winning the game and everything to do with enjoying the game! Should the player be so fortunate as to roll two success, he takes a green book token, a benefit indicated on the card as “+1P.” For right now, I’m calling the green books Plot Points, hence the P, and yet that’s exactly what they aren’t because these eccentric characters do nothing to propel the plot toward either conflict or resolution!If one success is rolled, the player should read aloud (and preferably act out, as well) the indicated action

How does one acquire these cards? Each player will have a personal character board that outlines specific needs of one leading hero or heroine from one of the novels. Are you an orphan who needs to go to school? Go through the draw deck, looking at the backs of the cards, on which is printed some essential generic information about each character, until you find one that says “Teacher,” and then add that card to your private deck. You might be lucky and end up with the kind Mr. Mell from David, or you might be very unlucky and draw Wackford Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby. I say “unlucky,” but what’s life, or a book, or a game without some challenges, right?

And speaking of challenges, what exactly are the goals of this game-in-the-making? Each main character has problem to overcome; Bella Wilfer, for instance, has to get over her mercenary view of life. Each main character has a secret to find: Pip has to find out who is providing him with money. An orphan must end up with a kind protector, while all heroines and adult males must end up married with a steady, reputable source of income, however small. (A penitent Bella will actually score higher if her husband’s income is small!) All grief tokens must have been removed by hearts. (Esther from Bleak House forms an exception to this rule since she, more than others, gets wisdom from sorrow.) All a player’s enemies must be caught or dead. Most of a player’s friends must be alive, happy, and preferably married. It’s essential to me that the game can have 0-to-n winners. If no one meets the goals, no one wins. If two of three players meet their goals, the two of them win, while the third has to be satisfied with a Pip-like ending to his story. 

There’s a lot yet to do. For one thing, I have to play with these cards and figure out how the game goes. How does one play through one’s private deck of characters? How many cards are in play at a time, and how can a player manipulate which cards stay and which go away (so as to get advantageous combinations in play together: a detective and a criminal, for instance, or a couple of young, eligible friends that really do need to fall in love)? Is there a map to move around? My original conception, as innovative as it was, was forged in the era of board games in which choices were limited and fates were determined by the roll of dice; the game that emerges from these last few years of thought and effort must present the player with a lot more choices. All of that means that I have to change some of the cards I already have, because I haven’t put real choices on enough of them. And, of course, I need to read a lot more and make a lot more cards – once I truly know what to put on them. Right now I have 53 cards in my little draft deck, but I envision that the game should end up with something like 800.

But right now, at last, I have a draft copy of some cards to play with!