New game!

[serina_ds]

Came up with an idea for a (rather complicated) new game tonight! Oh, and if you are religious and easily offended, you might want to wander away around...about...now... (^.^)
Here is a basic overview of the many ideas from many people - with thanks to Nile, Tom, Chris, Susan, I hereby present:

Revelisation! Like Civilisation but religious!

Goal: to build the most powerful religion and take over a country (or destroy it!). You win when you own 75% of all the population, 25% of all the money, all four ministries of the government (for 2 rounds), if you have the most followers after 10 rounds, or by unleashing armageddon on all the other players.
Played with 3 sets of cards, a d6 die, 'institution' tiles and several types of small counters.

Cards:
Doctrine - 'Core' and 'Fringe'. Some are Anathema to others.
Events - eg. miracles, schisms, holy wars, Zealot sucide bombings, Inquisitions, Ecumenicism (merging two religions),  Synod, mass suicide etc
Actions - eg. Revelation! (reveal face down doctrine cards), assassinations, sue your enemies, kidnapping, discredit a preacher (sexually, theologically or via bankruptcy after being sued), own a Representative, Theological Confusion (opponent plays all doctrine cards in hand face up), owns WMD, Copycat (pick a discarded Event or Action card to play) etc

Institution tiles:
Government ministries (education, defence, justice, treasury) - if own all, can win game
Media (TV, advertising, radio, Newspapers) - if own all, +2 likelihood of success
Military (airforce, navy, infantry, artillery) - if own all, overthrows gov. (all politicians neutralised)

Counters:
Population - by hundred, thousand or million; starts in the central 'body bank'. These can be neutral, Followers or Zealots.
Representatives - Politicians, journalists, soldiers. 6 politicians, 3 journalists or 3 soldiers = one arm of an institution.
Currency - by $m. These start off in the treasury.

****************************************************************************************************************************************************

Each doctrine can be played face up (a public doctrine - all 'Core' cards must be played face up) or face down (Secret Doctrine of the Inner Elect). They will have + or - modifiers, which also depends on if they are 'public' or 'secret'.
Each action or event card played has a consequence - 'costs' involved, and a resulting benefit. They also have a likelihood of success, and the player must roll the die to find out if they managed it. They can 'buy' a higher chance of success.

Each player has a Follower pile, a Zealot pile, Doctrines, Representative counters and a currency stack.

The discarded Doctrine pile is face down. The discarded Events and Actions pile is face up.

In the first round, everyone draws 5 doctrines. They can discard up to 3 and draw to replace them.
After that, everyone draws 1 of each type of card in each round and can play as many doctrines in a go as they like, but only one Event or Action card a go.
You can steal ('Convert') another religion's followers, but if you take all their remaining followers, you must also absorb three of their doctrines, taken at random.
A player can 'buy' a Representative. There can only be 3 (or 6) Reps per element of an institution. Therefore, if someone else already owns two Reps in, say, Newspapers, you can only 'buy' your way into one more. You can knock out another player's Rep by blackmail, kidnapping, assassination, etc.

If a religion has no Followers and no Representatives, it reaches the status of a cult. If the cult player has already played the 'Suicide is the way to Paradise' doctrine card face up, and holds the cards 'Mass suicide' plus Armegeddon, plus at least one of the 'Owns WMD', it automatically wins.
There are 10 rounds before the country reaches 'Religious Tolerance' and the game ends. If the game has not been won prior to this, at that point all populations are counted up and the player with the most Followers wins.

These are just the basic rules - if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to get in touch. We are creating this as we go!

Comments

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

This is Bad. And Wrong. And I shall be plugging it on my own Journal...

[serina_ds]

Hehe, absolutely! I particularly like the idea of the 'Cult - Mass suicide - Armageddon - WMD' way of winning...

Nasty!

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the old Chaosium game Credo?

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1304

Or how about The Three Commandments?

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38359

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I looked at Credo, and was unimpressed: it feels like a generic game with a bolted-on religion theme, and has no appeal to cynicism and a bent sense of humour. So I'm hoping that a gaming pro (rather than the Pembury's coven of amateurs armed with beer, experience and a truly warped sense of humour) can cast an experienced eye over the gameplay ideas, without turning it into another cookie-cutter turn-based game with event cards and a victory condition.

Much of this game - so far - is beer-driven handwaving; but the core idea is probably sound, because corrective mechanisms for the bad ideas fall out of it naturally - and so some interesting good ones: 'losing' players can stay in the game as a cult when all their believers are stolen away - or can pick up a new hand if another player suffers a schism... And there's an interesting analogy to the 'Valedictory Strike' in Nuclear War, when the disillusioned followers of a failed religion wander off to other churches, bringing a skilfully-selected collection of doctrines.

There are problems - lack of simplicity being the big one - and issues that we have failed to recognise and can only discover the hard way through extensive game-testing - and might mistakenly consider show-stoppers - which a professional would already recognise and know exactly how to deal with.

For example: a core gameplay has been nicked from the assassination dice in Machiavelli: namely, that the odds on an event actually occurring when you play the card are weighted by the resources you put into it. Specifically, discrediting a preacher has a basic probability of 1 on a six-sided die, but the player can 'buy media coverage' at $1 Million to give success on a roll of 1 or 2; then $2M, $4M and $8M to raise the odds to 3, 4, and 5 on the D6. Control of the media buys the maximum of five faces of the dice, for free.

There are problems here: money is the proper counter for buying airtime for the 'Preacher caught in a motel room' story and for 'converting' a politician. But what's the counter for 'buying' faces on the dice to discredit a doctrine by theological argument? Maybe the number of Universities you've founded, or subverted by campus campaigns... Which neatly sigues into a way of winning the Ministry of Education: it's the player with the most universities.

But the core problem is: we don't know how to 'price' it, or even if this type of play is known to be a good idea at all by experts with experience of game design and an overview of dozens or hundreds of commercially successful (or unsuccessful) games.

Which is a rather longwinded way of saying: This is a workable game idea than needs work, and I've never seen the work done from start to finish.

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

From what you're describing the best chassis to start from might be an election game. Try looking at something like 1960: Making of a President for ideas.

[serina_ds]

I believe both were mentioned (if only briefly) during the course of the night, but neither fully apply to the type of game we wanted to create.

Besides, it's quite interesting to put the game in a more modern context - with a few references which are amusing as well. We have a 'Spaceship spotted' card as well...

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

There's probably some concepts or groups that you could use for inspiration in Illuminati - either the boxed or collectible card game.

Some of the doctrine cards could be 'disproved' - eg. the belief 'earth is flat' could be countered by 'Magellan sails round the world' or similar, or if someone has already sailed round the world the 'flat earth' doctrine card could not be played... Or something like that...

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

The event card 'miracle discredited by science' was indeed discussed last night; it's a very powerful idea. Among other points, it could lead to *every* religion displaying the miracle (or the doctrine supported by a miracle, we're not sure of the gameplay) being forced to repudiate and discard it, with the loss of x folllowers decided by a dice roll.

Immediately I can see advanced gameplays on this: a discredited doctrine costs x believers per turn unless and until the affected religion can ditch it...

And now the gameplay becomes arcane: read that again as 'unless the affected religion can ditch it, find a theological fineagle that renders it a 'holy mystery' which cannot be discredited, or buy media airtime that neutralises all attempts at discrediting the miracle or doctrine. I'm thinking of Creationism, and of a gameplay in which rolling a 6 - and you can buy extra sides in the dice - not only repudiates the attempts at discrediting a miracle but leaves a public perception that you have incontrovertible scientific proof.

And that, in turn, means double bonuses forevermore, as long as the miracle card remains face-up.

A note... How do we play miracles? A special card that you play face-up on a selected doctrine, doubling the benefits? And can certain doctrines - but not all, or not many - be subject do scentific disproof?

Also, ALSO! - a very appealing game concept has appeared out of thin air: a Discredited Doctrine isn't automatically discarded with the loss of 1D6 x it's face value in believers: it's a sodding millstone, driving believers away for turn after turn until the player can discard it.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I've often felt that the most interesting games have non-linear gameplay, but not too non-linear. What you discus here certainly heads in that direction!

Designing this as a house game for the Pembury (and of course for later publication) could be an interesting project :-)

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Why not make the media anti-science strategy a separate doctrine card that can be used to (partially) counter the scientific discovery and thus preserve the otherwise-busted main doctrine?

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I'd like to avoid the idea that science is just another doctrine, to be declared true or false or blasphemous by priests and preachers: science is (or should be) more powerful than that and, as such, it should cost a lot of media influence and money to repudiate the evidence of science.

Also, there's the sinister gameplay of buying sufficient politicians and media influence to play 'Doctrine to be given equal time in Science lessons' - which must surely count towards victory in the game.

'Suppression of Science teaching' would be even more expensive but, if kept in play for x turns, would negate all subsequent scientific refutation of the miracles (or any vulnerable doctrines, if that's how the gameplay eventually works out).

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

I agree with this; scientific refutation is an event which is prety incontrovertible and screws things up for all the players - it's 'we can trump science' that's a doctrine, and as you say, a costly one at that.

Mind you, if there's an end-of-the-world victory scenario, how about an all-scientistic, Raelian option, with a hidden doctrine that wins it for you when some (large) number of science events have shown up?

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Addendum: some examples of doctrines and their refutations:

Doctrine: Disease is punishment for sin
Doctrine: Disease is the action of evil spirits
(obviously these two anathematise one another)
Event: Microscopes show germ theory of disease is accurate!

Doctrine: Transsubstantiation - this bread isn't what it used to be
Doctrine: The Philosopher's Stone is attainable
Event: Molybdenum fills a gap in the periodic table - transsubstantiation isn't what it used to be.

Doctrine: Pontifical Infallibility
Doctrine: Scriptural Infallibility
(both of these have special text to make them less viable once other doctrines get undermined; but also...)
Event: Formal undecidability demonstrated; even mathematicians aren't infallible now.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Oh, and obviously, germ theory devalues the healing miracle, periodic table screws up water into wine, and undecidability makes things look shaky for miraculous oracles.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

With the question of buying media airtime for anti-science stuff, I'm now reminded of the propaganda videos we watched at school, about Padre Pio's stigmata.

There will be a stigmata miracle, right?

[serina_ds]

We do have the science 'Miracle Disproved' cards, and we also have certain circumstances in which a certain number of Doctrines can be abandoned, say due to a Synod, one result of which is that the player *must* get rid of 1d6 number of Doctrines.

Also, if one of a players Preachers gets discredited, this allows the player to also discard one of their Doctrines at the same time (creating the interesting situation of a player possibly trying to discredit one of their own Preachers in order to get rid of a Doctrine which is Anathema to one of their other Doctrines, in order to prevent a Schism later on in the game...)

[palfrey.livejournal.com]

Given the mention earlier of a 'Spaceship spotted', the thought of a "miracle created" card e.g. space cults *actually* contact aliens, someone brings about the second coming with a cloned jesus (http://flem.comicgenesis.com/d/20000214.html), etc, etc (or maybe I'm just trying to get a full set of condemnations from various religious groups :-)

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Event card: 'Cloned Messaiah'.

That's a very, very interesting idea...

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Indeed! A possible golden recruiting tool - but also an almost dead cert to start schisms.

Er, I would be interested in helping develop this game, if possible. Thank you!

[palfrey.livejournal.com]

One is interesting. Many is amusing (or possibly N-part harmony)

Halleluja chores

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Can't quite get a Handel on that idea...

Halleluja chores'r'us

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Can't quite get a Handel on that idea...

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Particle accelerator turns lead into gold; alchemy is back on. (But not, alas, transsubstantiation.)

Presumably 'cloned messiah' plays badly with 'If you meet Buddha on the road...'

[serina_ds]

We didn't want much in the way of the 'confirmed miracle' cards - we're trying to keep *some* element of realism in there! ^_^

[numberland.livejournal.com]

It is indeed a fasinating game. Will definitely want more then ten turns though (ten actions is not enough to do much).

What do the face down doctorines do? Being just what's left in your hand seems odd so if they are not just your hand having some win conditions/special events which work by revelling a hidden doctorine.

I think the military hasn't been explored enough, it seems relatively week relative to the other institutions. Needs thought. Being able to attack other religions/abduct or assainate members of other religions and maybe being able to enact a coo but it is much harder to hold on to the government for those 2 turns.

Oh, there are lots of ideas, I will aim to think more soon.

[serina_ds]

This is very much a work in progress, we don't really know how all the elements will work yet.

In terms of the face-down cards, they are supposed to affect things when you or opponents make moves. TBH, I'm not entirely sure how it will really change things yet, but it does provide an interesting sideswipe!