Sermōnēs (Latin for ‘ways of speaking’) is an alternate history area influence game for 2–5 players in which you play as a regional dialect of Latin that is destined to become a standardized Romance language. As you spread across the declining Roman Empire and its evolving medieval remains, you will be challenged and changed by encounters with other dialects, pivotal historical events, and unfamiliar languages and cultures. Your success depends on cultivating linguistic innovations to help you develop into a robust language with its own distinctive history and rich literary tradition. The current version of the rulebook is available here as a PDF.
Note that this playtest prototype is a single page with no computer players and which cannot be accessed by multiple remote human players in the same game, so this is mostly intended for a single person taking on the role of multiple players. However, it can work with a group seated around a single computer and taking turns playing. Gameplay also differs from the rulebook (as noted in the rulebook). The prototype is in active ongoing development, though the current version seems to work well, so the fundamentals should remain stable, but features can change sporadically as bug as found and playtest information leads to gameplay tweaks.
You can also print and play a physical copy of your own using the following files, but there are a lot of components to print, and many that can't be printed (cubes, etc.) that you would need to have access to.
- event cards (pdf)
- goal cards (pdf)
- language cards (pdf)
- region cards (pdf)
- region bonus tiles (pdf)
- full map (png)
- standardization track (png)
- turn order track (png)
- card area (pdf)
If you do playtest the game and have any feedback, please do send it along!
Geeky gamer details
Sermōnēs is a medium-weight Euro-style game, about 3–3.5 on BoardGameGeek's 1–5 complexity rating scale. The actual large-scale turn structure is fairly simple (take actions, advance the timer, and resolve an event). The specific actions, and the options they present, are where much of the complexity lies (two levels of action across seven categories), but once players are familiar with these, turns should progress quickly.
A core mechanic is area influence, with players competing for presence on the board with little or no targetted removal of opposing player's influence, as in El Grande and Carcassonne. A key twist on this mechanic in Sermōnēs is that sufficient presence without control is often valuable, which means that building up influence only to lose control later can still score points, and in some cases, there are explicit goals that reward having minority influence. This is an important connection between theme and mechanics.
Another core mechanic is a built-in timer, like Tzolk'in's wheel or Pandemic's outbreak counter, with players forced to move towards inevitable standardization every turn. Unlike most similar game timers, standardization in Sermōnēs is not a negative threating doomsday clock. Instead, the timer idea is repurposed more positively as forward progress and linguistic evolution. In addition, each standardization path carries its own bonuses, so it is not a simple timer, but parallel tracks with different strategic benefits. (Note that this functionality is not yet implemented in the prototype, which uses common benefits across tracks.)
Other mechanics include hidden goals (as in Ticket to Ride and Lords of Waterdeep) and automated third-party factions (like the automata in Spirit Island and Root). There is a hefty luck component due to event cards that shape the game environment, as in Nations and Clash of Cultures, but a lot of the skill of the game is navigating that luck, and most of the events only perturb the game slightly, altering its flavour and texture, rather than completely changing it. Overall, clever use of actions and efficient allocation of resources will normally win out.
There is also solid replayability, with each game session feeling different while still being the same fundamental game. Most importantly, only nine out of the fourteen non-Italic languages are active in a given session, and this changes the starting map (since internal non-Italic langauges block their home region from initial occupation) as well as mid-game interactions. The randomization of goals forces players to consider and implement different combinations of strategies every session. There are also a variety of optional rules that allow groups to play fresh variants of the game.
As far as I can tell, the historical linguistics theme is almost entirely non-existent in competitive strategy games. One interesting and notable exception is De Vulgari Eloquentia, in which merchants and friars travel around Italy to collect documents to help them actively create a standardized form of Italian. It is an interesting take on the theme, but its mechanics (and their connection to the theme) are quite different from Sermōnēs, so the two games fill different spots, like Carcassonne versus Castles of Burgundy, or Concordia versus Istanbul.
Origins and acknowledgements
The basic motivation for Sermōnēs grew out of discussions from a “joyless critique” boardgaming session in Kingston, Ontario, in August 2025, in which I joined Bronwyn Bjorkman, Gretchen McCulloch, and Sarah Shulist to play and evaluate various kinds of boardgames focused on language or linguistics. A lot of specific prelimiary gameplay ideas came from a follow-up lunch with Sarah, which I later fleshed out into a full game. There have been various tweaks throughout playtesting. Thanks especially to Julie Doner for playtesting!