A toy game from the 2016 game design advent calendar.

---

That picture is a seagull. On a plain blue sky. That's it. I mean for real, it's like Wikimedia doesn't want me to make these. Still, it's better than a picture of a seashell.

Birds do this interesting thing: they flock. Flocking is pretty well studied, and there are a number of ways to simulate the behavior. This game attempts to do the same, but for people moving in a social space.

---

You're an upstanding person. A good parent, loving spouse, a pillar of society! But on the weekends...you worship the Blind Idiot God, the Chaos at the Center of the Universe, the Outer God Azathoth. Wouldn't it be great if everyone was as upstanding, virtuous, and happy as you?

Requires:

• Big sheet of paper for the map, or many small pieces of paper.
• 2d6 per player

Rules:

Most of the game takes place on a relationship map. Everyone at the table should help build it; come up with the major players in your world, celebrities, powers-behind-thrones, and social groups. Have a good mixture of people and groups. Each one will be represented by a node on your map, connected to some number of other nodes by links. Each of these links has a strength, representing how close these two people/groups are. For example, maybe you have 3 nodes on your map, to represent Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and Beliebers. You'll create a link between Justin and his Beliebers, and give it a high strength -- say 5. He has a big influence on them, and they on him. You might also create a link between Justin and Selena, and give it a strength of 3. They're kind of having an off-week.

In the map, leave room to create other nodes and more links. Around the map, circumscribing it, note a number of ideologies in conflict. At each node, make a note of what ideology that person or group ascribes to. For instance, we might decide we want to play out a version of the American presidential election. We write down Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Voters as nodes, and give each an ideology of Democrat, Republican, and Populism, respectively.

You'll want to have closer to a dozen different nodes to start with, plus the nodes representing the PCs. In the election example, we'd want more than one node to represent the voters, and a number of nodes for each political party: leaders, party members, celebrities.

So that's the setup. Here's the premise: the players are all members of a secret cult worshipping one of the Lovecraftian Outer Gods. Write this cult down as an ideology on the map, and note it as each player's ideology at their node.

The players have a simple goal: drive the people represented by the map to worship of their dark god. They'll do this by manipulating the right people, getting in with the right crowd, and pushing the right buttons at the right time.

---

Each player should choose three weaknesses they are well-practiced at exploiting; when they use them to manipulate someone, they should roll 2d6 and add 1 for each weakness exploited. On a 10+, it goes in their favor. On a 7-9, they get what they were going for, but its ripples have unforeseen effects. On a 6-, they don't get it, and the world turns on them.

Play proceeds in rounds, each round spanning some larger amount of time; a year, perhaps a month, maybe just a week, or anything greater. In a round, each player will in turn start a scene with anyone they might reasonably be able to interact with. This scene should represent the player's actions during this period of time, the turning point where things might have gone differently. When this exact moment occurs, and the player makes their move, they'll trigger the above roll.

When they do, the scene is over. The GM will say what happened, how it went, and reflect the outcome on the map.

GM:

The GM has a lot to do. Every time a player finishes a scene, there will be repercussions for their actions. Change the strength of links, create new ones, or destroy old ones. Reflect the consequences of the player's actions on the map.

After you've done so, and before the next player goes, choose one node (not a PC node) on the map and make the following changes:

1. Even out the strength of its links. Move strength from one link to another, or two links to two. You'll need to reduce the strength of a strong link and increase the strength of a weak one.
2. For each of its links, roll a d6. If its lower than the link's strength, decrease that strength by one.
3. If there is a most commonly held ideology among the nodes its connected to, make it agree with them. If not, change its ideology to that of the node with the strongest connection.

Any change to the map should also have a fictional effect. A decrease in link strength should prompt the GM to say how the players have heard rumors of an argument between the two linked. A change of ideology should be accompanied by the narration of a senator's changing point of view in the last year.

Notes:

The idea of this game is to model how social forces work in societies. This game is based on flocking (as is Common Defense). It takes surprisingly few members of a flock to change the group's momentum and direction, and move it in a brand new one. This game attempts to model that, setting the players the goal of moving the society toward their own ends. Whether it does so is hard to tell, such things are tricky. This may be a good start towards a different method of running political games.

More importantly, this game is about something important. People underestimate how much they are created and moved by social forces, even when they are aware that it happens. It is the nature of our people to move with others, to follow and lead, to split and rejoin. We act as individuals, and in so doing act as One. It's all very beautiful and ideal -- and like many ideal things, it's easily hackable in the real world.

Here we make a system that is hackable in the same way, in an artificial world, and hope to understand our reality a bit better for the effort.

--Karaktakus, Missionary of Questionable Gods

Prompt/cover photo: Wikimedia Commons