As some of you know, one of the things I've been doing the past few years to stay awake on the Bataan Death March home from GenCon is to try and come up with a game idea and more or less get it designed before the sun comes up. This year is no exception, and after about a week of deciphering my own cryptic ramblings, I've got something that is actually testable (but yet untested).

The game is called "soft landing", and is a negotiation/resource management game with a hint of role-playing and self-examination. Each player is a national leader, tasked with keeping their populace happy and if possible, improving the attributes of that nation (standard of living, etc). Of course, everyone else is doing the same, and there will probably not be enough resources to go around for everyone to come out ahead. This can lead to various stresses on the system, which can lead to Catastrophes of various types, which can end the game. The other end game state is that enough resources are contributed by the sum of the players to acheive some (unspecified) goal that increases global resources, which might be fusion power, cheap solar, etc., whatever floats your boat. Of course, people contributing to that have less to contribute to their own national priorities (victory points), making it more likely that those opting out of the "big program" will be in a better position to profit from it. That is, once someone else does all the hard work of a Manhattan Project, everyone else has a head start on their own.

Anyway, players can simply play to win, regardless of the outcome, play to a goal, or play to an ethos. Or all of the above. The internal question is to what extent you are willing to add to the chance of breaking the camel's back (Catastrophe), and to what extent you are willing to (try) to constrain other nations in that way. Plus, there are the forced decisions of things that you would rather not do, but which you have to do to meet your people's needs (it is assumed that all leaders will try to keep from being ousted by unrest, which requires certain minimum resource expenditures). While it is largely abstracted, something like wealthy nations demanding that developing nations refrain from environmental pillage while they try to industrialize would be part of game play.

While it sounds fairly complex, the actual implementation really revolves around trade of resources represented by suits of playing cards (2 decks required) and some simple guidelines regarding the ways players can stress the system for their own personal advantage, and the end results of that stress. While I am personally somewhat "green", the game is not meant to be slanted that way or to push a particular viewpoint. It's a competitive game, the object is to win. Exactly what lines you are willing to cross to do that are what you need to think about. Winning by being in the best position to rise from the ashes of Catastrophe is still a win...

Right now I have a 2 meg pdf of a playable first draft. I'll be testing it out myself at first opportunity, but I'm also looking for feedback on all aspects of the rules, and since it was all the cool Forge stuff I saw at GenCon that gave me the inspiration to come up with something different than my normal fare, I figured Forge members should have first crack at testing/critiquing/demolishing it.

Send me a personal message if you are actually up to finding at least a 4 player group to give it a test next time you and your friends get together, or if you were showing stuff at the Forge booth and are simply interesting in critiquing it.

Greg Porter
BTRC