by Dotwood_Games

Rite is an epic, asymmetric wargame by designer Karl van Stiphout and artist Frederick van de Bunt.

The Spark

The idea of Rite came to me in one evening. I wanted to create something in the spirit of my favorite computer games from when I was a teenager: Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, and (of course) The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth — which means the design had to have unique factions, individual units, and a battlefield.


Cthulhu's Trap

This was the original title of the game now known as Rite, and this was the story behind it:

As you can read in this background story, the factions were there from the beginning. Also, the 3-cost units were there from the start: a wizard for humans (cleric), goblins (sorcerer), and undead (necromancer), as well as a doppelganger for Chaos.

Objectives

It was clear from the start that unique factions meant unique objectives. These objectives were pretty much the same as in the final version: the humans need to activate shrines to bring an angelic army, the goblins try to activate fire beacons to call upon an ancient dragon, the undead need to open a portal to the underworld, chaos has to infiltrate all other factions, and primals have to feed and evolve.

However, the path towards victory was very different. As you can see in the first two images, the battlefield was premade with four shrines, twelve fire beacons, and a sacrificial square in the center.

The objectives of the three basic factions (humans, goblins, and undead) were pretty hard. An activated shrine would remain activated only as long as a cleric was on it. To be victorious, the human player needed four clerics in the right position at the same time. Goblins needed to activate twelve(!) fire beacons. Undead had to bring its necromancers to the center, where they would immediately die, placing a skull token where they died; four skull tokens on the middle four squares meant victory.

Looking at the summoning zones, these objectives were even more difficult to pull off. All factions had a small summoning zone of four tiles, indicated on the map by dashed lines of the faction's color. In a later edition of the map (below), all factions had to summon units at the edge of the map, which made it even more difficult!


Units

Rite has known many units that never made it to the final version. Humans had warhorses that were fast and could be mounted by other friendly units. (Spoiler alert: Mounts might be added to the game in a future expansion that is already written.) Goblins had dire wolves (and it appears we humans have them, too, in the actual world we live in). Undead had ghouls that multiplied when defeating units. All three of these factions had archers that were allowed to do ranged attacks.

Chaos had mindflayers, beholders, and of course Cthulu himself. The Primals had to lay eggs and had to wait one round for them to hatch...if they were not smashed to pieces by other factions before hatching. That's where the name hatchling comes from. Units had hit points — that was terrible.


Gameplay

The game consisted of four phases: income, summon units, move, and attack, with each happening simultaneously. First, every player got 4 mana (later called energy), then every player was allowed to summon units at the same time: spend X mana to summon units with a total cost of X.

In the move phase, all players could move their units simultaneously: for each unit you wanted to move, you had to write down its starting coordinate and the coordinate where you wanted it to move to, e.g., D3-D4. If units would end on the same square, the strongest unit would defeat the weaker unit. In case of a tie, both units would be defeated.

In the attack phase, all players had to again write down coordinates to indicate which unit attacked which unit, e.g., a human archer on square B5 wants to attack a ghoul on square E8, which is possible because the archer has range 3. He would write down B5-E8. Once all players had recorded their attacks, a skull token was placed on each unit for each hit it received. If skulls were equal to the number of hit points, that unit was removed from the map.

Light Bulbs

From this starting point, it took me three years to get to the final version of Rite. Sometimes I got stuck for months, then all of a sudden a light bulb appeared: a brilliant solution that made the game a lot better. In this section, I'll guide you through the most important light bulbs.

Again, the first version of this game was created in one evening. I wanted to play it asap, which is why I grabbed a Pathfinder map with squares and some whiteboard markers. I printed the units with art from Magic: The Gathering, Hearthstone, and random pictures found on Google, and we were ready to play the next evening.

At the end of that evening, I thought my game was crap, and I put it away. The main reason: It took way too much time.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

There were four main reasons why the game took too much time:

1. There was too much distance between summoning zones and objectives.
2. Some objectives were reversible.
3. It took time to track hit points, and it was pretty hard to get rid of enemy units.
4. There was too little energy to do all the stuff you wanted to do.

Distance was an easy thing to fix: Make the map smaller. Later, I introduced more ways to get to your objectives faster. The humans got power cards — rally and pilgrimage — that allowed them to move easier across the map. The goblins got a tunnel network that they could use to move through. The undead got power cards that allowed them to summon their skeletons anywhere, summon their death bringers anywhere, and replace these death bringers with necromancers. There was not really a reason for chaos to get more movability since they had no objectives in the center of the map. The primals got a rush power to help them chase down their enemies.


The reversible objectives were made irreversible by introducing objective tiles. Once an objective tile was activated, it remained activated for the rest of the game. Chaos got a "controlled units card" on which they could track units with which they had successfully infiltrated the enemy factions. Once infiltrated these points were also irreversible.

The only objective that remained reversible until the end was that of the primals. It is still possible to bring down Ultimatosaur, but good luck getting close to him without getting consumed by it!


When creating the game for the first time, units had hit points. This is fun for a computer game, but takes way too much time in a game where five factions can each summon at least twenty units. The skull tokens introduced later were better, but still took too much effort.

I was pleased when I came up with the idea of an energy system that fixed it all. For this, I was inspired by Hearthstone, a game in which I never missed a single daily quest for years. In Hearthstone, you get one more energy every turn, starting with one energy and ending with ten. Sounds familiar, rite?

Units were given an energy value of 1, 2, or 3. This was the cost both to summon the unit and to remove it from the board. Thanks to this system, it was possible to get rid of the hit points. Backup and surround were introduced later.


This energy system allowed me to get rid of game phases. With this energy, you were allowed to summon, move, and defeat on the same turn. You were allowed to spend it all, however you liked, but once you were out of energy, your turn was over. Basically, every player had the inescapable jaws power of the primals on each of their turns...

As a final touch, players were given faction and reserve energy. This allowed players to play different strategies: rush by spending all energy at once, or stack up energy to do more on a later round and unlock powers faster?


Hexagons

As you can see in the first pictures of the game board, it had squares. The introduction of separate hexagon tiles brought a lot of improvements to the game:

1. With hexagons, you have the feeling you can move your units anywhere.
2. No discussions about anything that goes diagonally.
3. Endless variability because these tiles can be laid together in endless ways.
4. The possibility for players to create their own game board or create one at random.
5. The possibility to leave out game elements of factions that were not in game.
6. The possibility to make a smaller game board when playing with fewer people.

Image: Henk Rolleman
Furious Firelord

Some of you that have played Rite might wonder: Why would you introduce such a random element like the firelord and his minions? Well, there are many reasons for introducing this randomness:

1. It gives the epic feeling of being in a dangerous place with an almighty firelord that can decimate you at any moment.
2. It takes strategy to prevent being eliminated by the firelord and his minions.
3. It forces players to change their strategy during the game. This is challenging and makes every game unique. There is no winning strategy.
4. It allows weaker players or players that are bullied by other players to get back in the game.
5. The flame elementals that are summoned help for many game effects. For example, they can be defeated to help the undead activate runes, and they can be eaten by primals so that they can evolve.

If you are not convinced by all these positive elements, you are free to leave them out. Another advantage of the hexagon tiles: You can flip them to their basic side if you don't like an element of the game.


One Action Per Turn

As described before, for two-and-a-half years, you were allowed to spend all of your energy at once. This was fun, but it had a few big disadvantages: turn order (which was set) was decisive in who would win the game, turns could take long, and there was no possibility for players to respond to actions of their opponents.

On a long trip home after a game fair, I got this final light bulb: Players are allowed to take only one action that requires energy on their turn. On top of this, players are allowed to take as many actions as they like that require no energy. This new system brought many advantages:

1. No more sudden victories.
2. Turns rotate more quickly.
3. Players can respond to one another. If a unit moves towards you, you can now respond by defeating the unit (if you have the energy to do so). Keeping track of each other's energy became more important and asked more strategy from players.
4. It contributed to replayability. It takes time to get to the expert level of combining different free actions in a smart way. This way, the game keeps challenging experienced players, especially if you also want to understand the possible free action combos that can be thrown at you by the other factions.
5. It allowed me to introduce a turn order system, giving players the opportunity to pass earlier in a round to get an advantage on their opponents at the start of the next round.

What's Next?

I'll let some placeholding art do the talking for me. Thank you, Blizzard.