P&W Sickness, Chiccadilly

I apologize in advance for the rambly and somewhat incoherent nature of this blog.

Politics and War has become so popular at my school that I've made it a rule to never, ever talk about it during school hours. That's how sickening it's gotten. There's one person who vowed to never play it because it was so popular, but then all his friends only talked about it when they were around him, peer-pressuring him until he was forced to play it. He now plays it every day, constantly. I never see him offline. It makes me sad.

Here's what's so weird: P&W is pretty much exactly the same -- and as fun -- as manipulating a spreadsheet. Everything is numbers: Resources, dollars, military. There is no strategy, no mechanics, nothing but numbers. You just want the numbers on your spreadsheet to be higher than other people's numbers. That's it. I intended the game to be a tertiary, two minutes a day kind of thing. It now dominates a significant proportion of my class population.

In other news, I'm a fan of hidden identity games -- games where you try to figure out who other people are. I invented one today called "Chiccadilly" (because, and this has nothing to do with the game whatsoever, my favorite spoonerism is "Chiccadilly Pickadee". It rolls right off the tongue). Here's how it works:

There are three basic roles in the game: President, Diplomat, and Assassin. Each game, you receive one of the cards. No one but you knows what your card is. Two people trade cards. Only one trade can happen in a game -- once two people trade, the game ends. If the President trades with the Diplomat, they both win. If the Assassin trades with either President or Diplomat, the Assassin wins.

There are possibilities for a lot of other roles: Bodyguard (goal is to trade with Assassin), Trader (goal is to trade with anyone), Traitor, and others. I think this game has a lot of possibilities in terms of design space. It's also a lot of fun. Go play it.

-Me