Designer's notes

KING OF SIAM


Douglas Adams once wrote: "What will happen, will happen." – Certainly this was so in the design of KING OF SIAM: I found it irresistable.

Everything started in late 2003 when I was in Siam, nowadays Thailand. I had been working there for over a year as a teacher, and I was curious to learn more about Thai history. But that wasn't easy, since the International schools where I was working did not teach Thai or Asian history, but only European history. Thus, there were no books for me to read and no teachers for me to question. However, what information I was able to gather fascinated me. Especially intriguing was the fact that Siam was successful in averting colonization. By the start of the 20th century, all of Southeast Asia was colonized except for Siam. How did the Siamese accomplish that?

The idea for a game was born. What about a game where different factions fight for domination in Siam, but every player has to take care that the British won't march in? Since there was never an open civil war in Siam, a political area-control game seemed the best fit. I thought that the conflict would be to influence the high nobility. The initial idea was that the British would invade if a power-struggle ended in a tie. In the event of a British win, all players would lose. I thought that this mechanism would simulate the cautious manoeuvring of the factions, which tried to avoid open conflict at all costs. The British would intervene if a civil war was threatening the kingdom. Civil war would result from a power vacuum – that seemed logical to me. Unfortunately, this initial game design did not work, and was not very original either. So, I put it on hold.

After my return to Europe and move to Berlin, I came in contact with several game designers. I started to play their and my prototypes in private sessions. It was in one of these sessions (playing another game) that I had the break-through idea: The players should not have their own pieces on the board, but they should predict which faction will win – just as it is written in the rules now. I then had the idea to divide Siam in 8 provinces and introduced 8 actions which seemed plausible to me. Originally, the Malays, Lao and Rama had individual special actions. It was more elegant, however, to simplify this in the form of the cards Rama, Malai, and Lao. Since I had 8 provinces (each with their own power-struggle) and 8 actions, I decided that these 8 actions should be enough for the complete game. This reduced the "chaos" in the game and made it very analytical. Basically, the first prototype of the second generation design was very like the game you now have in your hands. Initially, however, the four player game was not played by partnerships. One critical problem with the 4 player game was that with 4 players and only 3 factions the game tended to end up as a tie too often, and another problem was that the individual player did not have enough control over game flow. Since I am a fan of partner games, the introduction of the 4 player rules was a logical change, and it did improve the game. (By the way: Some players prefer to play the partner game with open communication. I am not a fan of this variant, but if players want to, they are free to try it. The use of a secret or coded information should still be forbidden, with all communication open so that all players can understand it. Players may state what cards they have, but they may not show them.) The last polish was given to the game with the aid of Richard Stubenvoll: a few rough edges of the design were smoothed, the borders were adjusted to better match those of 19th century Siam, and the game was tilted more towards historical accuracy.

The 3 chosen factions had never been altered since the initial idea for the game: In the South of Siam, there was the Islamic realm of Kedah. In South Thailand, there is even today a lot of friction between the Muslims and the Buddhists. So this faction was an obvious choice. As a second faction, I initially thought of the Burmese, but there never was any Burmese influence in that period. Furthermore, conflict with the Burmese was always of an external and military character, which was not a fit with the political nature of the game. Part of what is now Laos, however, was then part of Siam; and the Laotian people were not always happy about that. Given this, I opted for the Lao. (By the way, the final game board correctly shows the home province of the Lao. In the prototype versions, the Lao home province had moved well to the west. This was a result of the fact that the first protoype gave two home provinces to each faction. This was later changed to only one home province, because it gave game play more variability.) The third faction was obvious again: The Royalists, i.e. the Rama, who are the most important faction as per the historical facts. In the early design stage, their importance was reflected by fixing the power-struggle for Ayutthaya as the last and 8th power-struggle. Again, this was changed in order to open up game play more.

It may be of some interest that intuition and induction were able to capture an historical truth. It was only when doing the final graphical layout that I found the 19th century Siam coat of arms. These show exactly the chosen 3 factions – so to say as Siam's constituting ethnic groups. I want to add that historically the Malays should be pink and not blue. For reasons of colour psychology and better visual differentiation, blue was used instead. I hope you are able to forgive us this small inaccuracy.

Today, Thailand consists of more than 40 provinces, and in the year of 1874 there were even more. For the game, I had to merge many of the provinces. My choices were based on which provinces were important in the past as well as which provinces are bestknown today.

Thai people are quite famous for their Mai pen Lai! (That doesn't matter!) — This saying demonstrates quite a very relaxed attitude towards the difficulties of life. This kind of relaxed attitude will help you in playing KING OF SIAM, too. The trick is to know which province you should give up and which you should never give up. Remember also that you cannot hold the majority of all factions. Sooner or later you will have to decide which faction you want to accumulate. The action card Maharacha is quite often underestimated, though it is a quite powerful tool. By swapping the order of two power-struggles, a powerstruggle which is favourable for you may be decided earlier (so that you can, for instance, make good use of a Rama-card directly after it). But the Maharacha-card allows you also to "freeze" a province containing a lot of troublesome followers (i.e. of a faction not favoured by you). Note that the number of followers is limited. Especially in the four player game this is one of the keys to victory. Once you have an advantage of two followers of a faction, your control of it is quite safe. At that point, there is almost never any need to gather more followers of this faction. A better idea is to accumulate followers of a second faction, both to pressure on your opponents and to give yourself a second way to win. Of course it is always wise not to waste your actions too early, especially if your favoured faction seems likely to win.

In this spirit: Mai pen Lai!

Peer Sylvester, Berlin



The rules for download
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