COUP Vietnamese History Redesign
to raise awareness about history subject for students
For this project I have chosen to re-create, re-design a board game named Coup with the twist being the whole characters and backstories now based of the eras of the last three kings of Tran dynasty. At that time, the politics situational of these dynasties are very unstable. King, Chancellery and most of the officials started fighting and ploting against eachother just to have more power and take the chance to rule over the country.
While I'm not responsible for finalizing the illustrations, I did the concepts, researching, designing and finishing of the project.
My main inspiration for the art style come from a book named: “Technique du peuple Annamite” (Mechanics and Crafts of the Vietnamese People), written and illustrated by Henry Oger with the help of Vietnamese artists, published in around 1908-1910.
The book is also a research work about the Annamites (Vietnamese) techniques in their daily lives, with approximately 4200 drawings, wood carving artworks and other research works by the author.
Since I dont use any text to tell the history, I have to show that culture as much as I can using character’s clothes and the patterns on the card. Information on clothing from Tran Dynasty is very rare and often comes with different sources and different clothes. In the end, I have decided to base the clothing after the infos by “Đại Việt Cổ Phong”,
a big Vietnamese history group. The Tran followed the Ly dynasty peacefully, so the Ly legacies and values are still studied and learned from the Song Dynasty of China.
a big Vietnamese history group. The Tran followed the Ly dynasty peacefully, so the Ly legacies and values are still studied and learned from the Song Dynasty of China.
These pattern on the card are the patterns that have been carved or sculpted into stone slate, stair barricade, and wooden box of temples and fanes since the Ly-Tran Dynasty era. Why Ly-Tran and not only Tran? Because these two dynasties is right next to eachother and the Tran Dynasty have a lot in common with Ly Dynasty’s culture from the patterns to even clothing.
The characters were place at the right with their name on the left so that even if the players chose to hold the card at the side that obsecure that card’s name, they would know which card is it by looking at the character themselves.
A survey was conduct on BoardGameGeek forum to find out how would the different people hold their cards and the result was 77% of the people participated in the survey washolding their cards at the low left corner, ascending cards left to right, while the
other 22% was holding the card at the sides, descending cards left to right. That explains
why my cards’ left corners are empty. Also Im not putting any character description or abilitieson the card because it would be very cramped with infos and lost their main
why my cards’ left corners are empty. Also Im not putting any character description or abilitieson the card because it would be very cramped with infos and lost their main
visual focus.
I took some time and tweaked the characters abilities so that it matched with my newly added character:
The game has 6 character cards, each has 3 identical copies and unique abilities:
• Hoàng Đế (King): Block a coup attemp from Khởi Nghĩa (Rebel) card.
• Khởi Nghĩa (Rebel): You only need to spend 3 coins to get one life off any player instead of paying seven coins; or only 2 coins when another player joined in with 4 coins to coup a victim, this will create a temporary alliance
• Tể Tướng (Chancellery): Steal 2 coins from any player or block someone from taking your coins;
• Quan Văn (Civil Mandarin): Take 3 coins from taxes and give one to another player - temporal alliance
• Quan Võ (Military Mandarin): Lets you swap 1 character card with 1 random character card from the deck; Block taking taxes
• Nữ Quý Tộc (Noble Woman): Swap 1 character card with 1 random character cards from another player; Block taking taxes
Another new mechanic I have introduced in my rendition of Coup is the
"temporary alliance". It is when 2 player in one round decided to help out each other,
"temporary alliance". It is when 2 player in one round decided to help out each other,
i.e, pay for 4 coins with the Rebel ability so both of you can get a discount at couping someone else or take 3 coins as Civil Mandarin and shares it to one of the players. This mechanic fits right into the game because at its core, Coup is a lying game, you dont know who is who and you wouldnt know if that few coins you saved for them would be a knife in your back the next round. It creates a sense of the term “frienemies”, fault trusts and makes the player pays for believing in the wrong person.
