The continuing non-saga
August 28th 2003 -
The continuing non-saga
Let’s get this progress thing out of the way:
Games
I’ve been thinking a bit more about this politician game. Here’s the scenario: each player is a politician, running a dirty political race against the opponent or opponents. The game ends when the election is held, obviously, so there are a fixed number of turns to win the hearts and minds of the voters – represented as a pile of counters, say, initially all the same colour. The players can play some cards that change the colours of voters (“propaganda” cards), and can play other cards that make them more appealing to voters of a particular colour (“agenda” cards). Finally, there are cards to raise money to perform these two basic activities (“fundraiser” cards).
The game mechanic I’m keen on, is that all these cards can be played face down. The players can assert that a card does something, and the other players can accept that or attempt to disprove it.
The backs of the cards will have two spaces on them: one for the “claims” on the card – what the owner of that card says it can do – and another for the “checks” – the confirmation of those checks. Onto these spaces, the players place poker chips of a variety of colours representing the different types of claim that can be made.
For example, a player may play a face-down propaganda card, and use it as if it was face-up to change a number of voters from one colour to another. When they do so, they place chips representing that change onto the “claims” side – other players can then use other cards (which I figure will have to be face-up propaganda cards of the type “journalist”) to match those claims and reveal the card. The punishment (or otherwise) is then proportional to the degree to which the claims was exaggerated.
Players can also take actions to remove chips from the “claims” side (using, say, “spin” cards) so that by the time the truth is revealed, their claims are no longer false, according to the voters, at least.
It’s all beginning to come together. I might try and get the lunchtime guys together to begin brainstorming and playtesting next week, if I can get some poker chips together before then.