Our Hearts are Full of Spring

Open Your Hearts

Bring out your daffodils, dust off your leeks, and warm up your vocal chords, the Feast of St. David is upon us once more.

Down in Sussex, however, it is the arrival of Spring (by meteorological definition) that has the county's Havilering players abuzz. For a scientific few it is time to demote the Jack of Diamonds down to an ordinary Jack, and enthrone the Jack of Hearts as the new Jack Havel. The majority of players, though, use the astronomical seasons as reference, and so must wait until the vernal equinox on the 20th.

With such a flimsy excuse what better way to celebrate, then, than with a brand-spanking new section on the 'history' of the game.

Facts that Could Have Been

You may wonder why I've gone to the effort of writing up a completely false history of a game I've made up. It's a fair thing to wonder.

There are a few reasons, but none terribly important. If you think it's a stupid thing to do, then fair enough. Don't worry about it. Just ignore it, and read about the game as it exists (or storm off the website in disgust, if you so choose). If you've really got a bee in your bonnet about it, then drop me a line. I will certainly consider whatever you have to say on the matter.

But the crux is based on the fact that traditional games are more interesting (as a concept) than invented ones. There is a glorious richness, and weird arbitrariness, that naturally occurs when games evolve in the wild. And reading about the history of games, and the weird conventions and traditions they spring forth, is always interesting.

So I think it's fun to imagine a history for a game. I find it an interesting angle, when designing a game, to imagine how it might have evolved in reality, had things in history panned out slightly differently. You might think of it like a theme of a game. If you're playing something like Settlers of Catan, you could imagine a version of the game which is completely abstract, in terms of edges and vertices of a graph. But it's more fun to imagine building cities, and trading wheat for ore. In a similar way, even though there is not a theme to Havilering (or most card games), I almost think of this imagined history as a 'theme' of the game. It helps to ground it in a bit of context, and as a guidance in the design process, failing any obvious game design pressures.

It's probably not to everyone's taste. I'm not trying to be misleading about the provenance of the game — I hope I've made it clear enough that this is a fancy. My only point of ambiguity is trying to not break 'immersion' by constantly referencing the design process. If you feel I've not got the balance right with this, do please let me know.

Chock-full of Spring

Their Hearts Were Full of Spring is actually a great mnemonic for the seasonal suit for Spring, that did not occur to me until trying to title these ramblings. As well as the classic song linked above, they were also a London-based late-noughties band that some from the area and time may recall.