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This is a combination of all the (relatively off-topic) posts made about a potential CDG based loosely on Twilight Struggle, yet focusing on a 4-player game of ideology and revolution beginning in the 19th century and into the 20th.
I think this has been an interesting discussion and would like to see it continued - below is a collection of the posts.
Count Orlok:
I've been thinking about how to expand on the Twilight Struggle system and had a few thoughts.
Make a 4-player game based off of ideology. Players have a very loose 2-on-2 alliance, but are still working against each other. You have the left ideologies, socialism and liberalism, as well as the two right ideologies, monarchism and fascism. The game would start out without any strong presence of the socialist or fascist ideologies, so the game would really begin as a team game. Over time, the ideologies would split, and while still working together, each player would also be working to hem in "extremism" within their respective ideological counterparts. The game would greatly abstract the wars and would play through until beginning of the cold war.
These are mostly musings, but I think it could be an interesting idea. I'm not sure how to balance it, but you could always say that by the end of the First World War and the Russian Civil War that the monarchist player had pretty much lost.
Of course these are only ideas, but I might have to try to develop them a bit more and see if there is a viable way to turn it into a game.
Gary Sax:
I like the uneasy alliance aspect of what you suggested Count Orlok.
I'm not sure that monarchism makes sense as one of the players. I think Monarchism is perhaps best played as a neutral player (a la minor powers in Here I Stand) or just as the status quo force.
But I do think the facism/authoritarianism vs. communism vs. democracy is a nice 3 player setup.
Count Orlok:
The idea with monarchism is mostly personal bias. The game would probably start in the 1830's with the restoration monarchy in France and so that is where the main fighting would be for a monarchist. Then the 1848 revolutions would be the big flaring of influence for the leftists with monarchists trying to hold to their control. The First World War would be the doom for monarchies with the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian empire all dying.
I just like the idea of starting the game in the 1830's and having it play out until the 1930's. That was really the time in which the modern world took shape and it could be an interesting game of tug-of-war between ideologies.
Gary Sax:
Starting that in the 1830s makes a lot more sense to have monarchism then. It would still be an interesting status quo force but would probably need a player. If you played a early 20th century game, monarchism would be unnecessary as a player force though.
Dogmatix:
That sounds interesting--I'd certainly buy both a 19th and 20th century version. I also wonder if another late 19th-mid 20th century game could cover the anti-colonial movements--1 player as the french, 1 as the english as they had the largest Empires and the other players could either cover minor imperial powers, perhaps all together [Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, maybe US and Japan] and could be ignored altogether depending on the # of available people; other folks take on the the anti-colonial movements [playing the role of "the indiginous masses"] by continent or region rather than by individual country.
Jur:
I think the ideology thing could be fun. You could even start in 1815 and include Greek War of Independence and some of the congresses and invasions of Spain.
Ideologies: Liberalism, Socialism (with minor factions such as anarchism, communism, Marxism etc you got to keep together), Conservatism (includes clergy, monarchists and large part of the nobility) and Nationalism. All four did 'ally' at some point in time and while the conservatives start out in control, they face the three others.
Democracy developed so much over this period (from non-existant to parliamentary democracies of the 1920s) in this long term perspective it is not an ideology in itself. Liberals had a different concept of democracy than socialists, and even Bismarck saw advantages to introducing universal male suffrage (mostly because in most cases it killed the liberal parties).
I'd say limit the map to Europe and deal with the colonies in a more abstract way.
Gary Sax:
Agreed. If you had an early 1800s and after game it would not need a democratic power but rather a liberal power. I love it. Liberals, socialists, pure monarchism/authoritarianism (Conservatives). Those still don't match up perfectly as authoritarianism isn't really an ideology per se. I don't know where nationalism fits in but it could. Of course the game could definitely have democratic movement events that have various effects... I like, I like.
The idea of a really open (moreso than TS) type game where you have many countries worth victory points or something like that and you have multiple ideologies competing in those countries is very interesting. Alliances between powers could also occur and you could have hybrid regimes--think constitutional monarchy if you and the monarchy player come to an agreement with the liberals and your ideologies' combined power is stronger than socialists. This would be a really nice dealmaking part of the game. Or perhaps when your power gets a suitable amount of control in the country (regime of your ideology) you have generic card event options to make those countries perform actions--or just use a menu you come up with.
AH. Here's an idea. Each card has multiple uses--one is to strengthen your ideology in certain countries, something like TS ops influence points (but less certain, perhaps), but the other use is to try to attempt to have *countries* you control perform foreign relations actions. The difference is having a country perform an action from a menu of actions vs. having the ideology act to spread within countries. This could be risky--say you have an opposed dice roll or something depending on the severity of the action you want the country to take and if it fails something big happens, like revolution or another ideology taking power. Those actions would be scaled, obviously--trying to use cards to start wars using country/ies in your stable would be a very risky action unless your ideology has a strong hold on power there vs. some more minor action. You could also perform the events on the cards. So three choices. OR I also like a simpler setup--the cards you draw are all events that allow *countries* to perform the actions on the card (war, change economy type, change regime, etc). So only two uses--the ops points to just expand support or the event on the card to make countries your ideology controls act.
I see a multiplayer game like this being far more open and wild and woolly than TS--there's no domino effect game mechanic to anchor play like TS has. This is getting me very excited, actually. Many, many possibilities.
The big issue is getting people on board in some sense. What do the players represent? It would be hard to get people on board with the abstract concept of individuals representing ideologies or movements. Grey eminence and all that. I would buy into it but the abstraction there could be problematic for some. But if you think about it there *were* international networks that existed of these ideologies. OTOH they really didn't coordinate like this or anything, so you couldn't claim that individuals represent these networks.
As for the deck, I see it being much, much more generic than TS--way more non-starred events to use as tools. Perhaps mandatory events a la Here I Stand or something like that get added to the deck during certain turns.
To the map: the countries (hopefully there would be many, many of them, allowing you to create alliances between smaller powers or small/large alliances. This could be another country action event card!) would have some sort of endowment. Each endowment might reflect some sort of class structure, let's say. Middle class strength helping liberals, say a multiplier, high poor values helpful for socialism and high upper helpful for conservatives. You could change these numbers through various events... country endowment of resources. Very cool. This would have a nice side effect of really anchoring play--some countries would generally be strong supporters of certain ideologies just based on their endowments. Unless they were changed through events! This shouldn't be super strong, I'd like to keep open the possibility of even "safe" areas changing even if they are, say, strongly liberal. Make sure the freedom is there and not create many dead zones (i.e. Canada in TS).
This would be totally, totally awesome. I would never stop playing if it was good. Anyway, that was just a brain dump, but...
Now that I detail it more my idea sounds more like a more thematic and interesting Imperial, I don't like that...
Count Orlok:
Thanks for this post - you really clarified and formulated my thoughts together for me pretty well on the subject. This is very much what I had in mind when I was day-dreaming up the concept.
Although I'm not sure how nationalism works on its own. Maybe the nationalist players constantly fuel the aggression between the powers and feed wars and rebellions, but could win by also overthrowing liberal or socialist nations with nationalistic reactionaries. Could be very interesting.
One thing I also was thinking about, is nation cards, representing the relative strength and aggression of each nation. At the beginning of the game, there would be a certain amount in play (United Kingdom, Russia, Austria-Hungary) but there would also be nations that come into play later in the game but require a certain amount of a particular ideology in an area. For example, Germany could only come into existence once a significant amount of nationalism existed within Prussia and the other German states. Other examples would be Hungary, which could either come into play as an extremely weak power and get quickly demolished by Austria, or it could have lots of resources placed into its existence by the other players in order to sabotage the conservatives (who would have a vested interest in Austria). The amount of influence placed on the card could be used to greatly abstract wars, and would have conservative and sometimes nationalist influence removed through warfare, only to be replaced by socialism or liberalism. Not exactly sure how this would work, but it would be interesting. They could also serve as a form of scoring card, with the old empires scoring more points the longer they exist into the game.
As it goes for the map, I think Europe should be 80% of it, but I would also like to bring in other parts of the world as well.
Particularly, I think the Ottoman Empire is important as a conservative political force, replaced by a liberal state (Turkey). I would also like to see the revolutions in Brazil and Mexico, and maybe try to bring in China and Japan as well. These would be "off-map" locations, yet would still be important battlegrounds for ideologies.
As for colonies, I think they can pretty much be abstracted out. Although Colonialism and the battles between colonial powers are interesting, it had little to do with the ideological battles at home. The "off-map" locations would be Kingdoms and Empires that were in various states of fluctuation throughout the period.
