Dominion, developed by Rio Grande Games, is a strategic medieval-themed deck building game between 2-4 players. It was designed by Donald X. Vaccarino and published in 2008. The framework of the story is that opposing monarchs are all desiring to conquer as much unclaimed land as possible whilst protecting their kingdom. Players act as the monarchs to construct their kingdoms through a variety of choices that will either influence their subsequent strategies or their competitors’ tactics. The physical components of the game is broken up into different classes of cards -- treasure cards (i.e. copper, silver, and gold), curse cards, kingdom cards, and victory cards (i.e provinces, duchies, and estates). The monarchs compete to build the most valuable kingdom and do so by earning the most victory points. Their assets are represented by their deck of cards. Each player starts the game with 10 cards in their deck and draws 5 cards to place in their hand. A selection of other cards are placed at the center of the table where players are able to purchase more cards as long as it’s within their spending limit. The purchasing options include buying victory points, better treasure, or special action cards. In each turn, players are limited to one action, employing action cards or buying cards, before discarding their hands and replenishing it from their draw pile. Propaganda Wars allows a similar ability to spend resources on multiple action cards but limits the acquisition of political influence cards to one per turn.
The dynamic of this symmetrical system establishes players with an identical setup and access to the same resources and information, providing to an equal opportunity for winning. The key to winning is highly based off of how skilled a player is at managing their resources. The only chance element within the gameplay materializes from the draw piles. The certainty of knowing what cards are going into your deck after purchasing them is balanced out by the uncertainty of not knowing what cards will be draw together within a hand. Players can choose any other player to sabotage with curse cards and that adds one more unpredictable factor into the gameplay. Another asymmetrical aspect is the question of who moves first. It is advantageous to go first, however, there are rules implemented in the end game to try relieving that leverage by allowing the player with the fewest turns to win in the case that the highest scores are tied. Stabilizing the ‘first player advantage’ is something that my group has struggled to secure while playtesting our game because it provided such a big advantage. We tested with different approaches and found that allowing the player who goes second to have an extra card does not disrupt the chances on winning dramatically and is the most fair. Our end game is determined by who can capture five citizens first. In contrast, the game time in Dominion is limited by the resources available. It ends in the circumstance their there are no province cards left or if three of the purchasable decks are diminished. Both games are similar during the end game because the winner is contingent on whoever has the majority of one resource. Players continually adapt their strategy to comply with the cards they are provided in a turn. Each turn begins with a new hand and any cards that were previously bought are recycled into their deck. All resources are manipulated by the players themselves whether they are acquiring cards or sabotaging other players’ hands. Players are limited to the cards available for purchase, forcing players to fight over the same goods. Every action shrinks the pool of resources and actions that can be bought. Because the cards in the center are faced up, players know what type of cards are being bought and can see throughout the entire game who may be winning and plan for a curse to be placed on them. Usually a good strategy would be finding cards that allow a player to use more than one action per turn or cards that double their money so they can buy more resources. There are cards that counteract the effect of curse cards. This mechanic can be found in our game, Propaganda Wars, in which there are political influence cards that nullify the outcome of another P.I. effect (e.g. the political assassination card). Dominion relies exclusively on cards for gameplay while Propaganda Wars relies heavily on cards for the means of movement and gameplay variation. Propaganda Wars uses a board and pawns simply as a way of recording progress. My group can use more games that concentrate on decks for operating their game systems to further improve our game. We could improve the probability of the types of moves that could be played, the placement of political cards within each level, and probably the artwork on the cards.
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"One legal provision unique to England and Wales has been of particular importance to these aristocratic landlords: over the centuries they built many millions of houses, mansion blocks and flats, which they sold on a leasehold rather than freehold basis. This meant that purchasers are not buying the property outright, but merely a time-limited interest in it, so even the “owners” of multimillion-pound residences have to pay ground rent to the owner of the freehold, to whom the property reverts when their leases (which in some areas of central London are for no more than 35 years) run out. This is unearned income par excellence.
Built property aside, land ownership itself is still the source of exorbitant wealth, as agricultural land has increased in value. According to the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List, 30 peers are each worth £100m or more." By using real examples from history, we can improve the complexity of our game. This article states how the British Aristocracy kept power over people for over centuries. I'm specifically interested in the portion that talks about their control of land and their return. We have a mechanic in the game that allows players to gain a resource/opportunity from occupying a different land space. We could possibly change the gain/return that you get from occupying each land. For example, using the quoted information above, the Aristocrats could lose a resource for staying in the city but gain resources for occupying the countryside and/or ruins (underground). Bryant, Chris. “How the Aristocracy Preserved Their Power.” The Guardian, 7 Sept. 2017, www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/07/how-the-aristocracy-preserved-their-power. "The three ideal types developed by Franz L. Neumann (1957, p. 256 ff.), which use as a criterion the instruments of rule employed or required by dictators, are far better suited for classifying the various historical phenomena and systems of dictatorship. Neumann distinguishes “simple dictatorship” (the ruler exercises absolute control of the traditional instruments of state power), “Caesaristic dictatorship” (to gain power and to consolidate it, the ruler requires the support of broad masses of the people and the execution of social–economic reforms), and “totalitarian dictatorship” (rule is exercised through a differentiated power apparatus controlled by a governing party and a “social movement”)."
Our game uses elements of both the totalitarian dictatorship and Caesaristic dictatorship, but focuses mainly on the latter. The dictator in our game is focused heavily on gaining loyalty as a means to do a complete takeover. We should decide if the dictatorship in our game is a "despotic one-man rule", "elite-related rule", "oriental despotism", "totalitarian rule", or "constitutional dictatorship". By depending on the type of dictatorship, we can better determine a story that fits the functionality of the game. We can also tailor the actions in our game to that type of dictatorship and conduct more specific research. "Dictatorship." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. . Encyclopedia.com. 30 Oct. 2017 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. |
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December 2017
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