Tony Blair- watch your back! Coup’d’etat playtest set in contemporary Britain

Two weeks ago Judson, Joshua & I played Coup d’Etat, one of the nine games in my Heads of State series. We decided to set the coup in present day Great Britain- not to comment on Blair’s political plight but because we had played before in a fictional country and wanted to see how it work with a setting that we had some vague, basic level familiarity with. Coup had worked fine when we played before but it is the longest and most complicated of my short dictator games. Previous playtest report at http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=848&page=1#Item_7

I wanted to see if some changes would produce the same effect (like free-form Junta) with fewer sub-systems and without need for a moderator. The biggest change was pre-creating 6 targets each and placing them on the table on sticky notes. Each target had a strategic value that also indicated how notorious a move against the target would be. With these values pre-determined, there was no need for a GM to rank them in play. I also tried to accelerate the schedule of retribution by the government since that hadn’t kicked in much last time, and eliminated ranking the ‘story’ impacts of actions.

Character creation stayed the same- bidding for honors that the characters had won when they were military cadets in the same graduating class. Judson’s Col. Bathymetry had been tops at mathematics and was known as the altar boy of his class; he ended up with more persuasion than money or violence. Josh’s Maj. Gen. Had excelled at drill and military history and somehow had a rep as the biggest bully and the most popular student. He had three times as many points of violence as money or persuasion. My maj. Gen smythe (retired, currently a military analyst with the BBC) had won prizes at English, civics, and rhetoric and had high amounts of money and persuasion. We chose our character’s main motivation for leading a coup: end the unholy alliance with the U.S; restore the empire; stop the war in Iraq. With these mixed goals we launched into a 3 day coup, first choosing to pre-plan up to one action per day on the calendars.

The rules changes had some obvious effects:
· Players clashed more. With a limited number of targets, and only 3 targets worth 4 strategy points, our characters went after the same targets and interfered with each other more often. Early in the game, Joshua and I kept preventing each other from seizing the queen and prime minister.
· Actions were more transparent. Under the former rules, most coup actions were secretly passed to the GM and other players only found out about them in the next morning’s newspaper. This time everyone immediately knew what was going down, and had a chance to respond (see point above). I miss the paranoia built into the earlier rules but will go with increased interaction over mystery. Anyway, another dictator game, sic semper tyrannus, is all about the frustration of being in the dark.
· Players cooperated more. Because the reprisals by Blair’s govt had more teeth this time, and because the competition made us spend more of our points, we had to call upon each other to borrow power to stay in the game. Which I think created a nice balance of backstabbing and supporting.
· It is easier to succeed. Knowing what actions would be worth made it easier to accumulate enough strategy to collectively succeed in overthrowing the PM. This is mitigated by the increased potential for interfering.

We also figured out some changes during and post playtest:

· Players can ‘steal’ a target that another player has already seized control of, the stealing player gets individual strategy and notoriety but the collective do not get additional strategy points towards coup success.
· At end of game, char with most strat + notoriety is new leader. Other char, if strat higher than notoriety, become part of new govt. If notoriety higher, suffer some shocking fate.
· Notoriety level at beginning of day plus the most notorious action during the day = notoriety the next day
· When characters are competing for a target, the one with the highest margin of victory wins. If one char is trying to stop another from succeeding, the points spent by the meddler are subtracted from the active player.
· The number of people impacted by an action can raise the notoriety awarded and the highest ranking person impacted can raise the strategy
· Can call for help if attacked by govt
· Writing that the leader ‘tries to assassinate player’ is incorrect phrasing: only characters are targeted in the game

With these changes to Coup, I think that I am done running play tests. I need to transition to producing nine booklets.