Benchmark Research - Rococo

 

Rococo (Eagle-Gryphon Games 2020) is a resource management board game revolving around fulfilling dress orders for a prestigious ball. You must hire employees to complete tasks for you such as creating and tailoring pieces, gathering materials and hiring additional staff to meet your quota. Your job is to oversee, plan and manage your employees to gain prestige points, and ultimately win the prize of best work in the ball. (boardgamegeek n.d.)

What I found particularly interesting about Rococo (Eagle-Gryphon Games 2020) is its 7 round gameplay (boardgamegeek n.d.), with a deadline falling at the end of the 7th round. I think that this system really encourages players to make good use of their time, the deadline acting as a driving force as opposed to just waiting for one player to reach a certain score. I also enjoy the mechanic of hiring employees to perform certain tasks for you, allowing you to make the most out of your time.

There are different kinds of employees within the game, ranging from Apprentice to Master. Each level of employee awards a different amount of livre [the in-game currency] when you hire them, with higher level employees awarding a higher Livre level.

On top of this, Each type of employee can perform a range of different tasks for example:

- "Claim the Queen’s Favor": Gain 3 Livre, if you have the token at the end of the game, Gain 3 prestige points.

- "Acquire Resources": Using the Livre, your employee can purchase resources and either add them to your personal stash, or discard them to receive another resource by the name of lace.

- "Tailor a Garment": Trade in Livre and resources to fix a certain garment

While cheaper employees may allow you to keep more Livre in your pocket, they aren't able to perform all of the actions that may be needed. For example, only a master or a journeyman can Tailor a garment.

This mechanic is really interesting, while a little complicated to understand, I think a simplified version of this rule could be really useful and give a bit more dimension to the resource management element of my game.

You may also use Livre to fund decorations, these act as modifiers to your income where more decorations grant more income. 

For example, Basic income without decorations is 5 Livre, however if you funded 1 decoration you would add the number underneath [unless the garment modifier is applied then you would add that too] to increase your total income.

The garment modifier is a little complicated to understand, so I cropped the example in the manual to just show the section without. In this case, Blue would receive an income of 6 [5+1].

The end of the game arrives after the 7th round, where scores are added up and the player with the highest end stats wins. To calculate the final score:

- Convert remaining Livre to Prestige points

- Add together employee bonuses [check if you have the queen's Favor, if so, add in an extra 3 prestige]

- Add together your decoration and trademark points

- See how many resource points you have.

The player with the most points will win the game

Generally most people have a lot of good things to say about Rococo (Eagle-Gryphon Games 2020), Apparently once you actually get into playing the game the rules run a lot more smoothly than just reading from the manual. Most people's complaints about the game come from either the theming [a lot of people weren't fond of the dressmaking theme] and the amount of parts the game actually has. From my point of view, having only read the manual and looked through the pieces, I found it a bit complicated to wrap my head around, and I feel its probably a game you have to study for a bit before you actually get into playing it. Though through the mechanics I could understand I think this is a really interesting game, I love the idea of a 7 day deadline, the employee tasks, and the funding of decorations, its really unique and makes for a challenging yet fun dynamic. In my own game, I would like to try to implement both the deadline and employee system, just drastically simplified for a younger audience.

Bibliography -

Anon, n.d. Rococo: Deluxe Edition (Online). Boardgamegeek. Available at: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/296100/rococo-deluxe-edition (Accessed at: 8 December 2025)

Cramer, M., 2020. Rococo: Deluxe Edition Rulebook. Kentucky: 

Eagle-Gryphon Games.

https://cdn.1j1ju.com/medias/9a/a7/c2-rococo-deluxe-rulebook.pdf