I was dreaming a boardgame version of D&D which we can simply play with no DM, no preperation, just hack'n slash with a game-end monster. The only D&D boardgame I knew was “Dungeon” by TSR. Unfortunetly I didn’t have the chance to play it. I knew that if I made I game about dungeon crawling, probably it would be very similar to “Dungeon” or maybe not...
It all started with a simple sketch of a castle map at a launch break in 1996. I prepared the Kismet, monster and equipment cards with excel at work and the map was hand drawn on drawing papers. I remember our first play test just before our regular D&D session. Although the game was very far from complete, we had so much fun, especially with the Kismet cards. There were lots of gaps in the rules but it didn't matter because my gaming group was so supportive. I inserted the missing rules as we play. I continued testing the game, taking notes and updating the rules with diffrent groups...The core of the game didn't chance since then but I changed the combat system, the map and many other thing over the years. The goal was to be first fighter to escape a monster invaded castle by defeating the Dragon. I only used d6 for combat and other random events. There were so much dice rolling which caused downtime during turns; Dice rolling for movement, combat and the location of treasure . Also the Kısmet and monster cards increased the level of randomness. It was actualy hybrid of a minature game and a boardgame with experience points, hit points, coins and elements of a race.
The hand drawn first board get weary so I decided the prepare the board on the computer. My photoshop skills were at elementary level but I managed to create a decent board.There was three focus point in updating the rules: The first one was to shorten the game duration; It was more than 2 hours. Second one was to over come the run-away-leader problem. In the first version, If a player made a good start, generally that player won the game. The third and the last one was tuning the arithmetics of the game such as hit points, equipment prices, etc.
The most important criterion was (and still is) how fun the game was. I observed the behaviors of the players whether the are satisfied with the competition and interaction.
I deceided to change the goal of the game because I thought, to escape from an invaded city is not good enough. in the following rules the players were the heroes who were struggling to free a castle from the dragon and its minions.
With the updated rules I realized that it was the second version of Tayamat so I called it Tayamat v2.0. Today the final game is called Tayamat v4.2.
In this version I decided to add a missions feature to the game. I started to play Anarchy Online MMORPG in 2002. In that game pick up and deliver missions were common. I adapted that to Tayamat. I added 8 minor and 8 major mission. Each missons had unique magical award to the players. A feel of a theme could be seen in the game with the missons but it wasn't my priority at that time. It was difficult to encourage players to do missions because sometimes the player who doesn't do missions won the game. It was a problem of balance of the awards and the equipment.
I also added Titles feature. The players could earn titles like "Hero of the Blue Area" which granted them discount on equipment and tactical advantages.
In v2.3, the board had a upgrade; I reconstructed the castle for easy and tactical navigation. I also created new graphics and textures. For each player, I placed a track line on the board to track hit points and action points. I changed the points for health and actions, rearranged the prices of equipment and canceled some features such as lock doors and player elemination. I added a few story elements to the missons such as unique monsters and hostages to save. In v2.4, the monsters had different abilities and also the players gained different abilities during the game by capturing certain buildings.I continued playing this version till 2005... Then the development process took a U turn...
Next: Tayamat with Modular Board (or Tayamat Lite)
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