Excuse: The High-Stakes Game of Invasion Justification

In my spare time (which generally means while in the shower or elevator) I've been developing an idea for a board game. It's far enough along to invite some constructive criticism (and Lord knows you can count on the blogosphere for criticism), so here's the rough draft for your perusal:

Excuse
The High-Stakes Game of Invasion Justification

Overview: Stealing heavily from the game Clue, "Excuse" is played on a grided board. Instead of moving a square at a time into different rooms, however, players move along into various countries. As with Clue, the game revolves around three sets of cards, and the game begins when one card from each of the three categories is secretly selected and placed in a Top Secret envelope. The first player who moves to the appropriate country and correctly guesses which three cards are in the envelope wins.

The card categories include Country, Main Rationale, and Back-up Rationale.

Country: These include the usual suspects: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, etc. However, there are plans for a Deluxe Edition that will include other countries, like France, Germany, Spain, etc.

Main Rationale: Again, usual suspects to include Imminent Threat, Suspected Cache of WMD, Direct Link to Terrorism, Humanitarian Intervention, Social Engineering, Liberate from Tyranny, Ideological Total War, etc.

Back-up Rationale: These are the filler rationales and they are used to help fill in the holes of the Main Rationale; they include Containment Wasn't Working, Strategically Important (i.e., Has Oil), Broke a UN Resolution, Pre-Emptive Doctrine, Ongoing War Never Really Ended, etc.

Moving around the board: As with Clue, this will be done primarily by rolling two dice and moving one square per number roled, but in addition there will be Transference Cards. Before rolling the dice each turn, a player takes one Transference Card from the stack and follows its instructions. A sampling of the Transference cards includes:

Cronyism: "Your Vice President has close ties with War Contractors. Add 4 extra spaces to your dice roll."
Infighting: "Your Departments of Defense and State are bickering. Substract 3 spaces from your dice roll."
You've Been Had! "An exiled leader you back is found to be passing intel to your enemies. Lose a turn."
Personal Vendetta: "An attempt was made on your father's life. Move immediately to the country of your choice."

Like Clue, I'm sure this game grows old after a few rounds...but, then again, that most likely depends on your disposition.

Comments

[sidereal]

Hm. . Clue's an okay base.

Here's how I'd set it up. Each player is randomly dealt a country (Iraq, Afghanistan, DPRK, Syria, Saudi Arabia, France) and they have to "convince" the populace to invade the country. They can play justification cards at various times when the conditions are good and build up some kind of support value. Random event cards affect the support and so on. You can call for a war vote whenever you want. . the higher the support, the higher the chance it succeeds. And if you call for a vote and it fails, you're out.

[Moe Lane]

Sounds like a fun concept. Figure out a way to poke equal amounts of fun at the side that agrees with you, and you may just have a game that you could actually sell.

I say this semi-hemi-demi-professionally. :)

Moe

[Jesurgislac]

Monopoly started out as a Quaker board game to show the evils of capitalism... ;-)

[Moe Lane]

Really?

[sidereal]

Wow. apparently so.

Hey Mr. Underscore, if you're serious I can mock the game up for you in html/java so you can try out rulesets and what not.

And as long as we're on the subject of perverse projects. . Moe, you still owe us a script for a presidential ninja comic book. Don't think I've forgotten.

[Edward]

Actually, sidereal, I was only 3/4 serious, but I think your suggestion makes it a much more interesting game (i.e., having to convince the other players to support the effort), but that would require more players I think, unless it changed to where you collect and trade cards and then there was some logarithm (making it a computer game or a board came that included an electronic/computer element) that could calculate whether the cards you acculumlated equaled a compelling argument and there was a significant penalty (like losing 4 cards) for submitting your case prematurely. The Java applet idea makes this much more doable/interesting (and could make it playable online with groups of people...hmmmm...)

And Moe's point is well taken. The Transference Cards would definitely need to include items like

Puppet Protests: Millions of people march to oppose an invasion. Subtract 4 spaces from your dice roll.

Charity Scandal: Opposing nations found to be milking humanitarian efforts. Add 5 spaces to your dice roll.

I do think that being dealt a country would spoil some of the perverse fun though, and make the Personal Vendetta card obsolete. It would also make the social engineering rationale less important.

[sidereal]

"having to convince the other players to support the effort"

I was actually thinking that 'popular support' would just be some kind of abstract number. It would be difficult to get other players to support you since presumably you winning is their losing. Basically there'd be a 'popular support' value for invading each country. Transference cards and other effects would adjust that number.

You could even have your two rationale cards out with your country and the support accumulates on the rationale. So if you have Humanitarian Crisis as your main rationale for Syria, and some kind of Humanitarian event in Syria occurs, you would accumulate support on that rationale. But if you choose to change rationales (because one isn't getting any support) or are forced to by some event (discredited rationale) you lose the support accumulated on it.

You could also have some kind of. . media/war weariness, where there's only a finite amount of popular support to go around, so instead of adding from a vague pool, you're actually stealing it from other players. . as well as some kind of 'Peace' pool that represents support for doing nothing.

[Edward]

Aside from finding this somewhat offensive "as well as some kind of 'Peace' pool that represents support for doing nothing." (advocating diplomatic solutions is hardly "doing nothing" in my book)...you're obviously much better a developing games than I am sidereal.

What if there were Popular Support Chips. A total of 100 or so. You collect the Chips through clever manuvering or the strength of your collected rationales. There would have to be something that stops you from accumulating rationales like baseball cards though, some Credibility or Relativity Gap that cancels them out somehow (perhaps you can only collect Rationale Cards within a particular group or of different weights)...none of which adds to the reality of it though (clearly there were a million reason to invade Nazi Germany).

[sidereal]

"advocating diplomatic solutions is hardly "doing nothing" in my book"

Hey, don't jump from game mechanics to politics like that. Makes me dizzy. I only meant within the context of the game. Since the game is presumably about invading, doing nothing means not invading. If there's support for diplomatic solutions in the mechanics that would be incorporated, but that seems far afield from the theme of Invasion Justification.

I could see a basic structure where everyone starts to accumulate support tokens from the central pool, and then start stealing from each other once the pool is exhausted. And you could have events that move chips back into the pool. . domestic issues like economic downturns that turn attention away from invasion. Cards like State of the Union that drive support back into your justifications.

Anyway, let it simmer for a while. There are companies that will publish it if it's a good game.