by Orlando Sá
Editor’s note: Pessoa was released in early 2022 and will be available at SPIEL ’22 after being demoed at SPIEL ’21. —WEM
An Idea Is Just an Idea
I was scared to death when publisher PYTHAGORAS asked whether I could design a game about Fernando Pessoa. For Portuguese folks, Pessoa is like this literary monster (in the good sense) whose work is so impactful that there is not a single person in Portugal who has not heard about him.
I said I was going to look at it — but my first thought was, “How the hell am I going to design a game about a guy who literally created dozens of other guys that lived inside his head?!!”
“That’s it”, I screamed in the middle of the street while an old lady stared at me, quite scared about my strange behavior. “I’m going to design a game that not only focuses on his poetry, but essentially on those characters that he created.” If this were a movie, then I would have grabbed the old lady’s hands and started to dance with her and music would play in the background…but it wasn’t, and the old lady would have for sure called the police.
Heterowhat!?
Pessoa coined the concept of a “heteronym”. If you google the literary concept of heteronym — not the linguistic concept! — you’ll learn that a heteronym is a fictional character created by a writer to write in a different style, a character who has an imaginary life, a biography, and a specific writing style (even a different calligraphy in the case of Pessoa’s heteronyms). As my good friend Etienne Espreman said, Pessoa was the master of role playing way before role playing was cool — or maybe even existed as a concept!
This was my base: Take the more impactful heteronyms, and make a game about them and their poems. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
Well…
I had spoken too soon. Conceptually this idea was easy. The real challenge was how to combine the poetry-writing theme with interesting gameplay and entangled decisions and still make it work. Let me insert an emoji here to express how foolish I sounded :what:
I started by gathering the four most iconic heteronyms, supported by the knowledge I had about Pessoa’s work. I know I sounded completely lost before, but I must confess that Pessoa was one of my favorite poets of all time, especially his heteronym Alberto Caeiro, so I already had a lot of knowledge about him and the other three heteronyms explored in the game: Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Bernardo Soares.
Heteronyms in their prototype ugliness (Image: Meeple of Liberty)
And Then What?
Good that you asked my heteronymical crowd. The next step was to generate the game mechanisms from the theme itself. Unlike my previous published games Porto and Rossio, whose mechanisms were much more abstract in relation to the theme that supported them, I felt that here I had to follow another route, a route I had already been experimenting with for other games that I was (and still am) developing.
Let the Game Bleed Theme!
If each player were a heteronym, a metaphysical creation, then they would have to be moving between the head of Pessoa where they lived and the physical spaces of Lisbon where they could actually do things.
Solution: The game board is divided into four physical spaces and one metaphysical space — the head of Pessoa.
If we are a heteronym and we need to move, then we have to move and trigger actions.
Solution: Create a worker-placement game in which each player controls one meeple that represents their heteronym, and on their turn, they have to move the meeple into another space and perform the action.
But worker-placement games often have restrictions about placement; otherwise, they become too loose.
Solution: Two heteronyms cannot share the same physical space because, well, Pessoa could not “role play” two heteronyms at the same time.
But then, with so few worker-placement spots, players will get completely blocked!
Solution: Let’s make a fifth meeple that represents the physical body of Pessoa. Players have to spend energy to take control of it, but once you control it, you can move your heteronym meeple or Pessoa’s meeple — and Pessoa’s meeple can share a physical space with a heteronym and by doing so perform the action.
Okay, but if there is a heteronym meeple on that physical space and Pessoa’s meeple is also there? You would be blocked. Imagine it’s the last action of the game, and you cannot write a poem because of that?!
Solution: If a heteronym meeple moves back to the metaphysical space that is Pessoa’s head, they will have to exert themselves to go back by spending energy, but they will be able to perform the action of the physical space where Pessoa’s physical body currently stands.
Well, and about the heteronyms. How do you represent how different they were?
Solution: We create a game mode in which you play with the heteronyms as asymmetric since they were conceived by Pessoa as each focusing on a specific writing style, with special powers that break the rules of the game based on their known characteristics.
Image: Meeple of Liberty
Okay, That’s All Good, But How the Hell Do You Write Poems?
Well, my heteronymical crowd, I was about to explain that. Please exert your heteronymical patience with me!
During the game, you’ll be gathering inspiration cards from two of the most iconic cafes of Lisbon from that period. To do that, you spend your creative energy. Why? Because you’ll be arguing with all the artists and poets, and that costs energy. After a couple of heated discussions and several glasses of wine, you’ll feel inspired and head to Rossio square to write a poem. Why Rossio, you ask, when Pessoa has written everywhere in Lisbon? Well, because the Rossio square is beautiful, and I may have designed a game in the past about that, but that’s probably unrelated.
Back to our story: When you write a poem, you play cards from your hand and score points for the types of cards you are playing (according to how well your heteronym writes in that style), possibly receiving extra points if you have a poem that has some coherence of style. Then, you discard the cards, but keep one as a fragment of that poem that you will later use when writing your final poem at the end of the game.
Image: PlayItYourself
Did I Say There Is a Bookshop?
Pessoa had one of the greatest libraries of the time, and in the game, you can go to the bookshop to get new bookshelves filled with books of a certain literary style. They increase the number of points you will score when you write a poem using cards of that style.
Image: Meeple of Liberty
It’s a kind of poetry engine-building process — or a poetry engine-writing process…
Image: Meeple of Liberty
But What’s That Rotating Thing in the Middle of the Board?
Spot on as always, my heteronymical crowd. As we are about to end this ramble, I think I should mention that the metaphysical space is a rotating plate because it not only serves as metaphysical space, but also has an astral map and the calendar on the outside. Each time a round ends, the plate rotates, and when the game reaches 1935, Pessoa dies and the game ends.
Pre-production copy; can you spot the error? (Image: Meeple of Liberty)
Wait, You Said Astral Map?!
Yes, I did. Once again, you guys almost seem to be inside my head!
Pessoa was very mystic. Not only did he create full biographies for his heteronyms, but he also created astral maps for them. In the game, each time you discard inspiration cards (while writing a poem or while going to the bookshop), you check to see whether any of the discarded cards have at least one of the two zodiac signs depicted on the section of the astral map facing that action space. If at least one matches, you gain the bonus and get a virtual pat on the back from Pessoa himself for aligning your actions with the stars!
Image: Meeple of Liberty
Is That All? Can We Go Back to Our Lives?
Well, if you allow me for the last time, I would like to say that I didn’t explore some game elements in this post that I will let you explore for yourself if you open the doors of your physical collection to these metaphysical creations.
See you inside a poetry book somewhere,
Image: Meeple of Liberty
