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The Final Reformation

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Tbone
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I've always wanted to honor Christ with my love for designing and playing board games and man is the market slim. I kept asking myself "why are Christ (Christian) themed games so cheesy and broken?". They are either a mock up of monopoly or some trivia game, focus on only Biblical stories or historical accounts, or are bogged down by mundane Scriptural references to hide messy and uninspired mechanics. I wanted to fix that.

The Final Reformation (working title) is a fictional, yet scripturally inspired account of the battle for truth in the distant future. The Church is corrupt, world powers are collapsing, and Christ's name is far from view. You, a team of radical modern disciple (RMD) are to combat the world with the truth of Christ's name once more, gathering the inheritance of God from the east to the west.

This is a list of all the current mechanics and themes with a brief description:

Personalities/Gifts/Weaknesses You will create a deck out of two randomly selected personality traits and a weakness. You will choose a major trait - taking all the cards for that trait, keeping it face up so you can use the gift special ability throughout the game, a minor trait - taking only ten cards of your choice for that trait, placing it face down as your ministry tracker, and combine them with the cards of your weakness to create your deck. We are all uniquely designed to serve God. We are also completely human and struggle with temptations, but this does not render us hopeless because the grace of God loves a repentant heart.

Tactic vs. Stronghold You are trying to match your three pronged tactic with the three pronged population cards to gain the best result by matching them up or using faith. Different people need different kinds of ministry and its our job to be effective, but we must ultimately rest in God's sovereignty.

Passion/Action and Repentance You will balance your Passion and Action by choosing certain actions so that when you draw a weakness card you will not have to spend too much time repenting and can return to the ministry. Repentance is a daily occurrence, but when we have a moral failure, we must go through the due process of removing ourselves from our position and repenting fervently, especially in leadership.

The Gardener Action Wheel A rodel mechanic where you may only execute the action your piece is currently on so, communicating and working together is key. As a body of believers we must band together and know that all people are at different points in their walk when we minister and we will not always be in the same season.

Population Wheel You must manage the lost of the world and those who have gone astray in the church. Depending on how effective your ministry is some may be saved and some may harden their hearts towards the gospel. Managing the ratios between these populations will determine the environment of the game and the state of your disiciples. We cannot choose how people react, but we can do all we can to do what is right and minister to people with unconditional love.

Locations of Missions Each Location will have 1-3 population cards under them. In order to make the saved populations into disciples, you will execute the locations ability, and gain all of the saved from a chosen population card. Typically the Locations ability will change something in one or multiple population cards making location and population card interaction crucial. When we are on the mission field, our presence impacts the world. We must be wise and courageous with the gospel in hand.

Disciples The state of your disciples will determine your victory points as well as your effectiveness in the ministry. They may increase in loyalty to Christ and you, experience persecution, or even face martyrdom. Our relationships with the ones we serve and serve with is incredibly important. Sticking with each other through persecution and death honors God.

Fruits of the Spirit Each of your cards has a fruit on them that you can place in front of you. Exhausting these will allow you to execute abilities on the field. When we express the fruits of the spirit, we open up opportunities for God to work in our lives. The more and more we spend time with God the greater He will reveal Himself.
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These are some brief ideas. My idea is to make a kind of modern reformation type game where you are fighting against the heresies of the Church and the wickedness of the world. I like the deck creation as it gives you a specific role to play and also shows the reality of sin as you battle your own issues that are scattered throughout your deck ("Thorn in the Flesh")

I know this is somewhat a controversial theme, but I thought it was too good to pass up. It feels fresh to me and escapes the above issues that I mentioned. There might even be Catholic robots you'll have to mow down in order to preach the truth (I'll stop, i'll stop...). Anyway, many of these mechanics are surface level and I hope to gain some insight from you all!

Thank you.

let-off studios
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Managing Expectations

I'd say the bar is set pretty low for religious-themed games and agenda-themed games in general. But the good news is the bar is set pretty low for religious-themed games and agenda-themed games in general.

Just be sure to play test the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks out of it. :)

(couldn't resist)

Tbone
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Nice

Yes indeed. I would love to revive it some. Appreciate the humor. Even if this theme doesn't work out, it has given me plenty of ideas for mechanics using the tactic vs. stronghold idea. The way I've set it up tickles me a bit in terms of how well the theme latches to the mechanics, but I know I have awhile to reform it ;)

Tbone
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Sticking to Cooperative play

It has come to my concern that competitive play seems to degrade the meaning of the theme. Even if the theme is cooperative, if the mechanics are essentially competitive, the principles expressed collapse. It shouldn't be "I want to save more people than you," that is poor theology. It should be "We want to save as many people as we can;" much more biblical.

Though, in order to preserve the competitive, or should I say, personal tension (instead of "man what do we do!" I want to add more "man what do I do!") I will be adding more solitaire, engine building mechanics. I haven't played the Arkham Horror LCG yet, but I assume it will feel similar to that. These will be things like managing Faith vs. Works, overseeing your disciples, mourning you martyrs, and enduring suffering and persecution. Does this makes sense?

FrankM
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It seems to make sense

I'm not familiar with any of those games, but the goal-tension you described makes sense.

You could go all Organized Religion and say that the other players are leading people astray, save them from themselves! A slightly less bad idea would be that the leader of this reformation is not long for this world, and the players are trying do Good while also competing to see who gets to be the next leader (a recent big box game about The Godfather is similar, minus the cooperative parts).

It would be thematic to have NPC factions that are well-meaning but harmful.

If you want extra work, you can set up three different factions... let the players pick one and let the other two function as well-meaning NPC opponents. If necessary, you can preserve the Rightness of the players' faction by adding some corrupting history to the factions run by "the board."

To clarify, that means any one of them could be the pure faction, and they get an overlay of some sort to make them wrong (for example, drawing a random character flaw for the leader that makes the whole faction incapable of dealing with that flaw. Pride might lead to full-on cult status.). The player faction is Right because there is no fatal flaw for their leader (though he or she obviously isn't perfect). This could feed into a theme of No One Is Perfect But The Path To Redemption Is Narrow.

Mosker
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Thoughts and questions re: the past your envisioned future.

This path of thinking could either enrich the gameplay, or really muck it up, but have you thought about applying the historical potentials to your future. That is, is your envisioned future church so corrupt that it must be entirely replaced, as if it were a purely secular institution, or is something like Luther intended, a reformation from within possible?

That is, could there be a potential for an "establishment" player making concessions to the public in the appearance/reality of making such a reform moot? Think how much of the wars of the Reformation came about from missteps in communication and stubbornness?

What of the common ground between players? (Think of what might have happened if the interpretation of transubstantiation didn't come between (what then became) Lutherans and Calvinists).

And what of martyrdom? Both celebrated and discouraged by all sides throughout the centuries. Consider how it might affect your assorted resources, human, spiritual and material.

Tbone
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FrankM wrote: You could go

FrankM wrote:

You could go all Organized Religion and say that the other players are leading people astray, save them from themselves! A slightly less bad idea would be that the leader of this reformation is not long for this world, and the players are trying do Good while also competing to see who gets to be the next leader (a recent big box game about The Godfather is similar, minus the cooperative parts).

It would be thematic to have NPC factions that are well-meaning but harmful.

If you want extra work, you can set up three different factions... let the players pick one and let the other two function as well-meaning NPC opponents. If necessary, you can preserve the Rightness of the players' faction by adding some corrupting history to the factions run by "the board."

To clarify, that means any one of them could be the pure faction, and they get an overlay of some sort to make them wrong (for example, drawing a random character flaw for the leader that makes the whole faction incapable of dealing with that flaw. Pride might lead to full-on cult status.). The player faction is Right because there is no fatal flaw for their leader (though he or she obviously isn't perfect). This could feed into a theme of No One Is Perfect But The Path To Redemption Is Narrow.

I sort of understand what you're saying. Although, the way the game is heading, NPC's would definitely need to be an expansion of some sorts. The game is already heading into the "heavy" department and I need to start slowing down. I do like the idea though, would be great for a post apocalyptic themed government type game?

Tbone
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Mosker wrote: This path of

Mosker wrote:

This path of thinking could either enrich the gameplay, or really muck it up, but have you thought about applying the historical potentials to your future. That is, is your envisioned future church so corrupt that it must be entirely replaced, as if it were a purely secular institution, or is something like Luther intended, a reformation from within possible?

That is, could there be a potential for an "establishment" player making concessions to the public in the appearance/reality of making such a reform moot? Think how much of the wars of the Reformation came about from missteps in communication and stubbornness?

What of the common ground between players? (Think of what might have happened if the interpretation of transubstantiation didn't come between (what then became) Lutherans and Calvinists).

And what of martyrdom? Both celebrated and discouraged by all sides throughout the centuries. Consider how it might affect your assorted resources, human, spiritual and material.

I took your martyrdom into consideration and actually incorporate it with the game mechanics and I think it will work really well. I will update the OP with my ideas soon.

From the rest of the post, are you insinuating that there could be someone who could play as someone who is trying to play against the reformation? Interesting. Would definitely open the appeal to more players (or maybe not). Could you explain that more?

Tbone
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OP Updated

Lots of new content. Almost all of the games potential mechanics are set in place. Now I just have to polish it up and start to make a pre prototype to see if the game is worth further testing on Table Top Simulator with cards and other necessities.

I like the feedback so far. Its getting me thinking.

Tbone
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OP Updated

I condensed the original post so that the mechanics I plan the test are clearly stated, a long with the desired theme attached to them. The game is full circle and has most if not all of the mechanics ready for prototyping and testing which is the next phase.

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