Players of power

Introduction

This is a role playing game developed on the Pillars of Power framework in the style of dungeons and dragons.

Each player role plays one pillar of power in society. One of the players is a campaign. The game then goes in rounds where each round simulates one month. Over the rounds your campaign and society evolves.

The game can be played by 6-10 people and lasts more than two hours.

The idea came from an experience of wanting to play around with some crazy ideas for your campaign that you wouldn’t bring up to a meeting, but still could be fun to experiment with, and also to just have some fun.

Game setup

  1. Distribute the pillars of power between the players. Ideally you are one person for each pillar of power, but you can team up to be two for each role. The pillars are the following:
    • Game master and the rest of the world
    • Campaign
    • Media
    • Police
    • Government
    • The people

It is optimal if you have one player who has some experience with dungeons and dragons or role playing. They should be the game master / rest of the world.

  1. Every player makes a short character sheet for their role. They write down the following: What characterises your pillar? What is your relationship to the other pillars? Is the media bought by Big Oil? What is the government like? What is the campaign about? etc.

  2. Every player presents their character sheet. This can provide context during the game.

How to play

The game progresses with the campaign trying to impact their society in the direction they want to, and the rest of the players reacting to it and also acting independently. It’s an attempt to simulate some of the dynamics between how the rest of society influences your campaign and vice versa.

This is the order of turns for the players.

  1. The rest of the world
  2. The campaign
  3. The police
  4. The media
  5. The government
  6. The people
  7. The game master

Notes on the pillars:

Rest of the world:

The rest of the world has a very broad range of actions. It can be natural disasters, it can be what happens in other countries etc. It is to set a frame for the round and open opportunities for the players.

The game master:

The game master makes sure that the game flows. One way of adding dynamic to the game is by rolling dice. When a player attempts to do in their turn, the game master can make the player roll a dice to determine the succes of the attempt. You don’t have to roll a dice for every move by every player. Mostly the bigger and more risky moves

example: The police attempts to infiltrate the campaign. How does it go? The police rolls a 3 on the dice. Game master says that they went to a talk and got invited to a training and a poster-session

The campaign:

The campaign can make three moves in each round. The campaign starts by having 15 members and 1.400€. The campaign is the only player to have their participants and money measured and being restrained by that in their turns. The game master defines how the actions of the campaign impacts their money reserve and member count. It could fx. be that one of the moves of the campaign is a mobilisation effort at the local market. Then the game master either decides how it went or makes the campaign roll a dice. It can also be an indirect effect of another action. So maybe the campaign had a viral protest, and the game master decides that this lead to big donations.

The rest of the players have one move pr round, and don’t have to think about money and members.

Extra

You can experiment with other players such as

  • Faith societies
  • Celebrities
  • The royal family
  • etc.