YORKTON - The world of role playing games holds something of a special place in terms of my personal gaming journey as I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons not long after arriving in Yorkton as a journalist opening the door to many hours of adventure in the years since.
So when I came upon Battle for Diratia, being touted as ‘an easily accessible and elegantly simple Wargaming and RPG hybrid’ I was of course curious.
That the game system is from a collective in Montreal simply meant I had to know more because it is always a bonus to support Canadian efforts in this space.
Thanks to email it was a relatively easy task to connect with Dylan L. Dionne with Productions Diratia, and quickly learning the crew are players first.
“We are avid gamers, both on the table and computer,” he offered, adding, “our favorite tabletop RPG’s are GURPS and Fate.
“Our favorite regular board games are Chess, Catan, Poker and Diplomacy. And our favorite video games are Mount & Blade, Battle for Wesnoth and Final Fantasy Tactics.”
That is a rather diverse range of games to draw from when it came time to create Diratia.
“Both of us (Dionne and Francis Clarkson), being roleplaying game masters of regular games for multiple years, we often had issues where the rules were not appropriate for the situations we wanted to recreate with our players,” said Dionne.
“We do not believe in creating something for the sake of creating something, so we searched to make sure nothing else could do what we wanted before even starting to work on our game.
“The goal was to create a set of rules that could accommodate most situations a roleplaying game could require, especially when looking at combat and tactical decisions.
“That way, games can go from duels between two wizards, to small adventuring parties traversing dungeons, to leading a 100-man army to battle before creating a kingdom and conquering cities while managing a 2000 men army.
“Our goals were to give the players a similar experience to our favorite videogames, on the table with their friends. Such as the rags to riches experience provided by Mount & Blade or the campaign team building of Final Fantasy Tactics.”
In the end Dionne said they have created something they feel is unique.
“What you should not expect is either a standard roleplaying game or typical wargame,” he said.
“This game is at its best when used as a hybrid where players are going from social encounters to battles of many different sizes.
“You are going to have the most fun when playing a tactical roleplaying game where positioning is important and strategic thinking will make the difference between success and failure.”
Diratia came together over two years but Dionne noted they want to keep this game in constant development for as long as possible providing free updates to the player base improving the base game and creating additional content based on player feedback.
“Saying this, we do understand that the game is not perfect and does not include rules for very specific use cases, but we are always open to feedback and requests and act on the feedback we get,” he added.
So, what was the most difficult aspect of designing the game?
“We mainly face two major challenges,” offered Dionne.
“Firstly, balancing complexity and immersion.
“We try to create rules for most situations and to make them as realistic as possible, while not making them so complex the game is not playable. Creating rules is easy, making them simple is not.
“Secondly, this is a passion project and not our full-time job, so finding time and energy to put the team together and keep updating the game is not always easy.”
So in the minds of its designers what is the best element of the game?
“The reason why we decided to play this game ourselves rather than others is because of the versatility,” said Dionne. “We constantly play different games, from WW2 platoon wargames to Napoleon era Fleet warfare and our game can accommodate any type of game we want to play without us having to learn a new ruleset.
“If you just want to play a single way, for example “army scale sci-fi wargames”, then this game is not for you.
“Most wargames will offer you a solid and simple combat system, focusing on a single theme and scale, but will not be able to adapt outside of their scale or theme without breaking the system.
“Most roleplaying games will offer rules for both social encounters and skirmish combat, but again will not adapt outside of their scale or theme without making the rules so clunky it is unplayable unless battles are simply narrated by the GM and not played.
“Again, our system will not be better than a specialized system but will be great for players who change types of game regularly or play games that evolve.”
Of note, Diratia uses special six-sided dice that allow the game to give unique results while not unbalancing the game when playing at different scales or with units of varying skill, said Dionne.
As Dionne noted the system will not be for all, but it is certainly one to take a closer look at for those wanting a single offering covering a range of play scenarios.
