Old North - Designer Diary [1] :: A Cold Open
- Mark Jambeck
- Aug 28, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 15
Today, I want to introduce Old North - a game of area majority, negotiation, and diplomacy.
Old North is a project that has been in the works for several years. It is a game still very much in development, with its parts, pieces, and mechanisms under regular testing and review. I wanted to bring Old North to light in order to share some of my thoughts and reflections on its design after finding considerable inspiration from the development diaries of seasoned designers in the industry (most notably, Cole Wehrle's designer diaries on Oath and his older works). My hope would be that these diaries act as a similar model and motivator for other designers to begin and share projects of their own, as Cole and others have done for me.
When I began working on Old North, I had a set of goals in mind. First, and most importantly, I knew that I wanted the driving mechanism to be area control/majority. I didn’t want Old North to be a full-fledged wargame, but I did want there to be natural conflict and territorial control. One of my favorite styles of area control games include those where players share the different territories of the board, including classic corner-stone designs in area majority such as El Grande, the COIN series, Pax Pamir, and Root, among others.
This was something that I wanted to bake into Old North. I often find games in this niche to be particularly interesting from a design perspective. They equip each player with a knife and then send them all into the closest phone booth. The physical scale and size of the board on which players compete and contest territories contrasts with the depth and overall strategy that these games employ. In Pax Pamir, for example, players compete for two to three hours over the same six regions. In many other area control or wargames, players typically compete over dozens of territories (Dune, Game of Thrones, Twilight Imperium, etc.). From the outside looking in, competing with three other players over six total territories sounds like a bad nightmare – but in practice, it’s a great nightmare!
The difference between games such as Dune and Pax Pamir, in my opinion, comes down to the ecosystem of the board. In large-physical-scale area control games like Dune, you are given tools to advance your interests on the board, control areas, and remove opponents. In small-physical-scale games like Pax Pamir, Root, and others, the board itself acts as your tool to help advance your interests and goals off the board. I wanted Old North’s design to encompass the latter, but in specific ways – which leads me to my second goal.
I wanted Old North to exist in a space that was discussion heavy. I wanted a small-scale board that was significant to player objectives and acted as both the initiator and mediator for negotiation. I didn’t want players to live and play in their own world; I wanted them to share and inhabit the same space where their decisions would carry weight on each turn. This is, of course, much easier to say than it is to do in practice.
I wanted the board and physical play space of Old North to act both as a tool for players to advance their goals but to also be the direct result of their actions off the board. For example, I didn’t necessarily want it to be the type of game where, on each turn, you would move pieces, add pieces, battle pieces, etc. to impact the board – rather, the board would be impacted by decisions and actions taken off it. The goal of Old North was to be more political in nature, where conflict would arise on the board, but only because of external motivators.
All in all, my vision for Old North was a product that would be physically small and compact but would also swing above its weight when it was brought to the table. Old North wouldn’t be a grand strategy game, and I didn’t necessarily want it to be either. Ultimately, I hoped that its final form would challenge and compete in that niche of games that I found to be so enjoyable.
Future designer diaries will cover Old North's development, progress, and testing in greater detail. Thank you for reading!
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