the tyrant has left the building... I'm very happy to have tests of all nine games complete, and grateful to the folks who have played these games & all the great ideas they have come up with...

Josh, Judson and I play tested the last two games from my collection Heads of State: nine short games about Tyrants. Both games featured ‘the star of liberty,’ a fictional Uruguayan dictator that Alex had created back during the first session and who had reappeared during tests of the Disappeared, Palace Gates, and As I lay Dying.

The star didn’t fare well this night. He was hacked to death with agricultural implements during our first game; then reassembled for our second game so he could be hauled before a international tribunal.

Sic Semper Tyrannus is a game of assassination. Players are members of a conspiratorial cell dedicated to slaying the despot. The game centers on the challenges of planning an assassination plot through garbled communication channels.

The game has a GM. Since there were three of us and a 2-person conspiracy wouldn’t quite test all the angles of communication, I was Gm and ran a character.

We started by assigning points to the Tyrants traits: paranoia, security, and luck. He ended up having a paranoia rating of 3 and security of 7.

Character creation is also done by assigning points in three categories: the characters’ positions in the regime, in society, and in the conspiracy. Judson made Manuel, a coffee grower whose father’s plantation had been nationalized. Josh was Jean-Baptiste, an anarchist working in the dictator’s motorpool, and my character was Louis, a bitter bureaucrat in the dept of public works.

Josh’s character had the highest conspiracy core so he became the leader of the conspiracy, ‘handling’ Manuel and Louis. Josh started the action by sending messages (writing notes) to the two of us. Every time messages are sent in the game the sending player flips 4 coins. If you get 4 heads the message goes through perfectly. The more tails that turn up, the more the message is altered by one of the game’s garbling methods (translation, crossing out some words, or limiting the length of the message). Our favorite was translation (putting the message through an online translator then printing it out.)

As an example, here is the first message my character received from Josh’s at the beginning of play: “for the commander from consorting with the men of the part of the hills to suppose of the father of emergency in order to organize, therefore like the test of the blessing of the commander. If assessed its fall, in order to communicate, authorizing one review of the motor for the Royce bearing.”  Judson and Josh were able to communicate, albeit with some difficulties, but after 3 rounds of back and forth Josh and I kept rolling badly and I couldn’t figure out what my character was being asked to do.
In the fourth round all 3 of us met in person, limited to 30 seconds talking, and I was quickly clued into the plan.

Next each player described what their character was doing in the run up to the assassination attempt. Louis accused the father of the head of internal security of treason to cause turmoil in the dictator’s bodyguards. Jean-Baptiste got an ally assigned as the star’s driver. And Manuel waited with a few farmhands to waylay the car when it passed by his farm. As GM I awarded us each 2 coins since our characters were contributing to the plan in a solid manner and utilizing our backgrounds. I gave an extra coin (out of possible 3) to Josh to reward the moderate creativity of the plan. We flipped our collective 7 coins, counting heads. I flipped the tyrants 3 paranoia coins to find out if the plan was creative enough to even get a shot at the dictator, plus his 5 or 6 suspicion coins that had accumulated when we met in person and went past 3 rounds of planning.  We got more heads that the suspicion coins, so our characters were not caught before they could try the plan; and we also got a lot more than the dictator’s paranoia result. On to the actual assassination attempt.

Judson’s character was the only one on the scene of the attempt so he described how Manuel and his laborers flagged down the Tyrant’s limo, dragged the leader from his car, and started chopping. I again awarded 2 coins to each player and threw in one bonus coin for a modestly strategic plan. We flipped the player coins (and could each re-flip one by drawing on our motivation) and barely beat the tyrant’s seven security coins (the tyrant can reflip a number of coins equal to his luck rating). Therefore the attempt succeeded and Justin narrated the successful, bloody act of tyrannicide.

We discussed some rules changes, including some that I think will be big steps forward and a few crazily inspired modifications:
* first round communication should start with 2 or 3 coins, then rise one per round so that earlier messages are easier to send
* players flipping coins to see if a message is garbled can choose to put some of the coins into the tyrant’s suspicion pool rather than flipping them. This should be the main way that he leader’s suspicion grows, although probably still add suspicion automatically from face to face meetings and in later rounds.
* only allow 1 on 1 meeting because if the whole conspiracy can meet together to talk why bother to send messages.
* always randomly determine which method of garbling will apply to messages (so that players can’t write messages in a way that easily bypasses the garbling)
* maybe add another garbling method (like oulipo’s N + 7)
* each round player send messages plus their character takes one preparatory action (buying explosives, recruiting an ally, etc.). You have to flip coins to succeed at the action. Flip a number of coins equal to whichever one of your 3 traits is most relevant and if you get at least one head, you succeed. Maybe your profession can give a bonus coin if relevant.
* during resolution of assassination attempt, have each player narrate one action per coin flip, rotating around table
* If conspiracy fails in first attempt give them bonus coins for later attempts (reflecting experience) to balance out tyrant’s increased starting suspicion.
* Use an ‘out of town” GM. After plans are devised, call a friend living out of state and pass the phone around so each player describes their part of the plan and the person on the line then decides if the different parts of the plan are mutually supporting, and awards coins accordingly.
* For GM-less play, each player starts with 2-3 coins. After communication phase, players write out or state their actions and for each ‘link’ between different players’ statements, give the other player a coin. For example Josh placing allied driver in tyrant’s car would link to Judson’s flagging down car.

Crimes Against Humanity

This game is basically a war-crimes/human rights abuses trial with international prosecutors and judges. It is structured to allow each player to take multiple roles: to serve as prosecutor for one criminal charge, defense lawyer for another charge, and prosecution witness for a third charge. At the end of the game players are judges for some or all of the charges.

We started by each choosing a nation that was taking part in the trial, writing down the relationship between our chosen country and Uruguay, and noting down a secret goal of our nation. Judson chose the United States with the goal of  returning nationalized property to rightful owners, especially US companies. Josh chose Iran with the goal or pinning blame on the CIA. I was Brazil, with a goal of getting back land lost during the 19th century Gaucho war. (By the way apologies for any giant historical errors, we weren’t trying to be accurate).

Next we created prosecutors from our nations. We then created judges from one of the other player’s nations, and gave them a personal motivation (we all ended up choosing similar motivations of fair trial, justice served, etc). We held a prosecutor’s meeting to choose what charges we would bring, with charges drawn from a 1996 U.N. draft list if crimes against humanity. Judson chose to prosecute plunder of public & private property; Josh brought an indictment on enslavement and forced labor; and I focused on the forced expulsion of residents of Brazilian ancestry. As a nice bonus, the tension between Iran and the US started flaring up in this meeting.

Before each charge was heard the prosecutor and witness for that charge went out of the room for a brief consultation, then came back and the prosecutor launched right into opening statements, forcing the defense attorney to react. After opening statement, prosecutors and then defense attorneys questioned the witness for a few minutes, each followed by closing statements. We agreed that being on the defense was probably the most fun and most challenging role. For the enslavement charge, defense team Judson argued that the witness had broken a valid domestic law by criticizing the tyrant and therefore the force labor punishment was legitimate. For the expulsion charge, Josh showed that the 17 year old witness didn’t know the facts of his family’s land tenure and wasn’t even an Uruguayan citizen. For the plunder charge I claimed that the alleged forgery of deeds was simple fraud rather than an international human rights abuse.

After the cases were done we put on our Judges hat and wrote down our initial judgment on each charge, Then we met briefly with the prosecutor from our country, who lobbied us on how they though we should vote. (It turned out that all judges were leaning again the desired wishes of their governments.) Judges finalized and shared our verdicts (it takes a simple majority to convict) Innocent on enslavement, guilty on plunder and I forget how the expulsion charge went. As a final step we wrote down punishments (either a fixed term of 1-20 years, life, or death). Judson and I voted for life which prevailed over Josh’s vote for 10 years. (A death sentence would have required unanimity).

We had less suggested changes for this game, it went pretty smoothly and it was nice to rotate roles.
* allow objections. In the rules I allow objections as an option but it requires 4 players so one can be a judge ruling on the motion. We thought that in a 3 player game, the player being the witness could be neutral enough to adjudicate.
* real countries worked well- in the rules you have the choice of creating fictional nations but in this case choosing real nations gave us lots of stereotypes to work with
* Maybe have judges’ meeting at end to determine punishment rather than each player writing down recommended sentence?