I also thank Dr Hamish Cameron for loaning me two books on Queen Zenobia and the Sassanid Empire. My thanks go to David, Dutton, Kerry, John, Scott, and Jeb for volunteering to play control, and to Alasdair Muir, Ben, Bernard Ganley, Clarence Beaks, Io Brindle, John Morton, Thomas Cole, Madeline Collins, Max, and Scott Daly for help with playtesting. The Control team were rated 4.35 for their job. Rate of Play was 3.69, so the game was on the slow side. The Difficulty rating was 3.04, very close to the Goldilocks rating of 3. The briefing information had a score of 4 out of 5. All of the online players who submitted feedback rated the game a 5 for enjoyment. The players generally enjoyed the game, with a median score of 4.44 out of a possible 5. Apart from losing half of Britain and Gaul, and letting the Franks pillage Italy, at least Hispania has been defended. There were about five Emperors during the course of the game, although Emperor Philip the Arab lasted into the third game round, doing much better than their historical counterpart. Other minor catastrophes included a rebellion by poor farmers in Sicily, and nomad raids into the African provinces, the Picts crossing into Britannia, and the Franks settling in Belgica. The white wooden walls represent extensive border defences, while the castles represent city walls. Smaller cubes represent light infantry or auxiliary forces. A large cube represents a legion or equivalent force. The Sassanids had managed to take Armenia and the other northern buffer states. While the Emperor (Blue) had led a large army to the East, they might have been better off defending Rome, but not even the leadership of Empress Decia Britannicus Maximus was enough to turn the tide. Meanwhile in the Orient, the Palmyreans (Yellow) had successfully played off all of the other factions, looted the Sassanid home regions, and managed to move into the vital province of Egypt. Goths with their loot from Rome, northern Italy is a bit pillaged. All things considered, ceding Dacia to the Goths in the first game round may have been a mistake. With each game round representing three years, we played through to approximately 265 CE, by which time the Roman Empire was doing a bit worse than in history, as the Goths had managed to take Rome, bribe the Senate into ratifying a Gothic Emperor, and then handing out enough imperial real estate to make the other Gothic players Senators. Then in quick succession the empire is struck by plague, and invasions by Franks, Goths, and Sassanids. The game started in 249 CE, with Rome celebrating its 1,000th anniversary. Orient Map with web camera mounted on a tripod. I have another post planned that will go into the weeds on the design of specific mechanics and how well they worked. In this post I will give a brief overview of events from the game, and then go through a lot of the player feedback. Most of the briefing materials for the game are available on my website. The Barracks Emperor megagame was run on Saturday 16 October 2021, with 32 players in the Newlands Community Hall, and another nine online players.
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