A cutthroat, political board game inspired by Game of Thrones, but a bit simpler and more varied (and you obviously don’t need to know that story or whatever to play).
Goal
GOAL: Each player controls a family and wants to conquer the entire country.
One begins with little — a single place, a few important figures, a piece of history.
One builds on that by expanding their family, forming alliances, bringing other people down, conquering places, and improving their general economy.
The whole country is conquered if you have firm alliances with all other players (no one is at war), and you are the largest of everyone, and you have more than half of the places.
What it is about
WHAT IT IS ABOUT: It is really about the people.
Appointing the right people, finding the right friends, trusting/distrusting the right people.
Turning people against each other, placing the right people in the right place, possibly bringing people down with lies or bribery.
Having strategic places and a good economy is nice, but not sustainable if you focus only on that.
When it is your turn
- Income: you collect taxes from subjects, and receive the yield of your fields.
- Action: you perform as many actions as you are allowed to perform (depends on your family)
- Expenses: you pay for your army, you pay other people for certain treaties.
Actions
- Train army
- Move army ( + fight if necessary) ( + discover something new if necessary)
- Build ships
- Move ships ( + fight if necessary) ( + discover something new if necessary)
- Spread information/rumors
- Respond to information/rumors (?)
- Let people marry each other
- Get heir / expand family
- Use special action of person (or place)
- Murder someone / take prisoner
- Send people messages / meet / make proposals and form alliances
- Send specific people somewhere
Main rules
As always I try to let the game consist of only a handful of unique, simple, strong core rules that make the rest of the game possible.
Mechanism #1
MECHANIC: You can discover things about people/spread rumors.
However, it takes a second step/series of steps to verify them.
The effect or influence depends on the players (how they react to it), how likely it is that it is true, how serious the rumor is
Mechanism #2
MECHANIC: Everyone owns certain “strategic places” with advantages.
To get from one place to another one must pass by those places.
Such a place can offer protection against circumstances/hostilities, or food and water for an army.
For example you can make alliances so that you can let people pass or stay overnight.
You can also take strategic places by force.
Mechanism #3
MECHANIC: Everyone controls a certain “house” — a family, or a people, whatever you want.
Such a family owns certain “strategic places” and important persons.
Each family must at least have a father and mother from whom heirs come
Mechanism #4
MECHANIC: At all times they must provide food, water, and money to themselves and their subjects.
Certain places provide food and water. One can also make agreements with others, and receive/buy it from them.
Your subjects determine tax.
Mechanism #5
MECHANIC: Everyone’s starting places are determined in a random way. Their location, however, is therefore fixed, as well as how many places lie between locations. When one travels, on foot or by ship, one therefore passes those places and gradually finds out what is there.
Ideally I would like to have a completely different world every time you play, with different places that are strategically located or not.
Notes / Problems
PROBLEM: How do I place the strategic places?
In principle one can get and find “random” places.
But these places must still be connected to each other in some way, so that for example you must pass a certain place before you can go somewhere else.
It should not be the case that people simply spend the whole game searching for new places without ever attacking anyone, so there must be a rule for that.
PROBLEM: How do I handle rumors? How are they verified?
Option 1: The rumor cards are blank, and you invent the rumor yourself.
Option 2: The rumor cards are fixed, and contain certain remarks about the past/actions of a certain family
Rumors are “guarded” by certain gatekeepers. If the large majority says it is true, it is true.
PROBLEM: How do we “name” persons?
We cannot do first name/last name, because that is different for each family. (And it seems fun to come up with yourself.)
Maybe based on their specialty, or we simply give them no name.
PROBLEM: How do we decide which person you get in your family?
Maybe simply random? You draw a person from a facedown stack, and voilà, he is in your family.
But too random is not fun. So maybe you can attract/repel people. Maybe only if those people first lie with your opponent.
Everyone takes turns, starting with the player with the most power (?)