Hello,
Thought I would throw this out there for the contest as I needed some different ways to think for a few days. For this contest, I chose:

• City - I took some liberties and am using the functions of the government within a city (the city itself is its own kingdom).
• Edge - The game sets itself on the edge of a new ruler and revolves around the state of the city before that ruler appears.
• Skin - This game will get under your skin in ways that only political debates can

I typed this up in about an hour so it will most definitely change in the next day or so. I will post newer versions up as I make them.

It happened in a flash of brilliant green light. You were there as the unexpected son of a woman your boss killed enacted revenge by bringing the gods down to judge her. The gods then turned to you and each of your co-workers.

“She was not worthy for this kingdom, her heart was shrouded in darkness, he will have to do until the hero of light appears. She or he will appear in a number of years. We cannot see  it. What we want you 5 to do is to advise this farmboy on the ways and means each of your responsibilities interacts.”

With that, they all disappeared. The advisors of Education, Economy, Government, Religion, and Family all stood staring at each other. How do we prepare the kingdom for its real and eventual ruler?

This is a 6-player game about political opinions and agenda setting given a set of ideological building blocks.

If you do not know, the basic definition of ideology is:

Ideas used to obscure the truth and to manipulate people through deception. These ideas are derived from some underlying issue: e.g. physiology, class, the struggle for power, and so on.

Government (The State): There is a great deal of agreement among social scientists as to how the state should be defined. A composite definition would include three elements. First, a state is a set of institutions; these are manned by the state's own personnel. The state's most important institution is that of the means of violence and COERCION. Second, these institutions are at the centre of a geographically bounded territory, usually referred to as a SOCIETY. Crucially, the state looks inward to its national society and outwards to larger societies in which it must make its way; its behaviour in one area can often only be explained by its activities in the other. Third, the state monopolizes rule-making within its territory. This tends towards the creation of a common political CULTURE shared by all citizens.

Education: If one takes SOCIALIZATION to refer to the sum of practices by which new individuals are made into members of existing societies, then ‘education’ is that subset of practices which have as their intended outcome particular kinds of more or less reflected-upon shaping. More narrowly still, ‘education’ is used as a synonym for schooling, specific institutional provision for the transmission of knowledge and skills, the development of competences and beliefs.

Economy: In its broadest sense Keynesian-ism is an approach to the political, social and economic affairs of advanced capitalism that validates the state taking a leading role in promoting material welfare and growth, and in regulating civil society. It also has a narrower meaning as a body of economic theory underlying macroeco-nomic policy. Both concepts of Keynesianism derive from the writings of the gods from which the policies they attempted to implement from within each kingdom as it was made. The fundamental idea of Keynesian thought is that capitalist economies systematically fail to generate stable growth or fully utilize human and physical resources; markets, which are civil society's main economic mechanisms of self-regulation and adjustment, cannot eliminate economic crises, unemployment, or, in later versions, inflation. However, the meaning of Keynesianism, in either its broad or narrow sense, is open to interpretation and is the subject of continuing controversy, as is its validity.

Religion: The term ‘religion’ refers to institutionalized dispositions and actions relative to the sacred – a dimension of life that is felt to be incommensur-ably more profound, powerful and significant than the everyday or mundane. Religion expresses concern with matters of ultimate significance such as the meaning of life, suffering, evil or death and the sense of hope for a better future including salvation, peace, life after death or rebirth. There is wide variation in the social forms through which religion articulates ideas about the sacred, and the sedimentation of these ideas in cultural, experiential and social forms over long periods of time has helped to establish religion as a powerful and enduring institution in virtually all known societies. The distinctive characteristics of each of the world's major religions represent particular ways of symbolizing the mutual relations between human beings and the sacred.

Family: For many years, people have believed that a universal definition of family was “a ‘social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults.” Numerous scholars have argued that the defining characteristic of the ‘modern’ family (with its roots in the privileged classes of the nineteenth century) are altogether different: at least in ideology, this family is formed on the basis of affection and love; it operates on the behalf of the personality to provide psychic security; and its spouses are companions and its parents (or at least mothers) are emotional and nurturing to their innocent children. Moreover, whereas the agrarian family was all but indistinguishable from the community, some scholars suggest that relations within the contemporary family have become more greedy and valued; both as consequence and cause, relations outside of it have become more remote, specialized, rational and tenuous. The gods have written: ‘Indeed, it has become increasingly clear that “family” and related “domestic” concepts as we know them are relatively recent developments. Many of the distinguishing features of contemporary family discourse – in particular the notions of privacy and sentiment – were either absent from or unimportant to the discourse of primary social relations prior to the last few centuries. Scholars argue that as late as the end of the Middle Ages the German language had no word for the private groups of parents and children that many currently call family. Some well-respected scholars even suggest that it is only from around the fifteenth century that Europe sees the rise of a new concept: ‘The concept of the family’. The arrangement was present, Aries contended in his groundbreaking work, but ‘the family existed in silence; it did not awaken feelings strong enough to inspire poet or artist. We must recognize the importance of this silence: not much value was placed on the family’.

I suppose in the end this is more a pedagogical tool than your standard pen and paper game but it is fun to make nonetheless:

It happened in a flash of brilliant green light. You were there as the unexpected son of a woman your boss killed enacted revenge by bringing the gods down to judge her. The gods then turned to you and each of your co-workers.

“She was not worthy for this kingdom, her heart was shrouded in darkness, he will have to do until the hero of light appears. She or he will appear in a number of years. We cannot see  it. What we want you 5 to do is to advise this farmboy on the ways and means each of your responsibilities interacts.”

With that, they all disappeared. The advisors of Education, Economy, Government, Religion, and Family all stood staring at each other. How do we prepare the kingdom for its real and eventual ruler?

Ideas used to obscure the truth and to manipulate people through deception. These ideas are derived from some underlying issue: e.g. physiology, class, the struggle for power, and so on.

Government (The State): There is a great deal of agreement among social scientists as to how the state should be defined. A composite definition would include three elements. First, a state is a set of institutions; these are manned by the state's own personnel. The state's most important institution is that of the means of violence and Coercion. Second, these institutions are at the centre of a geographically bounded territory, usually referred to as a Society. Crucially, the state looks inward to its national society and outwards to larger societies in which it must make its way; its behaviour in one area can often only be explained by its activities in the other. Third, the state monopolizes rule-making within its territory. This tends towards the creation of a common political Culture shared by all citizens.

Education: If one takes Socialization to refer to the sum of practices by which new individuals are made into members of existing societies, then ‘education’ is that subset of practices which have as their intended outcome particular kinds of more or less reflected-upon shaping. More narrowly still, ‘education’ is used as a synonym for schooling, specific institutional provision for the transmission of knowledge and skills, the development of competences and beliefs.

Economy: In its broadest sense Keynesian-ism is an approach to the political, social and economic affairs of advanced capitalism that validates the state taking a leading role in promoting material welfare and growth, and in regulating civil society. It also has a narrower meaning as a body of economic theory underlying macroeco-nomic policy. Both concepts of Keynesianism derive from the writings of the gods from which the policies they attempted to implement from within each kingdom as it was made. The fundamental idea of Keynesian thought is that capitalist economies systematically fail to generate stable growth or fully utilize human and physical resources; markets, which are civil society's main economic mechanisms of self-regulation and adjustment, cannot eliminate economic crises, unemployment, or, in later versions, inflation. However, the meaning of Keynesianism, in either its broad or narrow sense, is open to interpretation and is the subject of continuing controversy, as is its validity.

Religion: The term ‘religion’ refers to institutionalized dispositions and actions relative to the sacred – a dimension of life that is felt to be incommensur-ably more profound, powerful and significant than the everyday or mundane. Religion expresses concern with matters of ultimate significance such as the meaning of life, suffering, evil or death and the sense of hope for a better future including salvation, peace, life after death or rebirth. There is wide variation in the social forms through which religion articulates ideas about the sacred, and the sedimentation of these ideas in cultural, experiential and social forms over long periods of time has helped to establish religion as a powerful and enduring institution in virtually all known societies. The distinctive characteristics of each of the world's major religions represent particular ways of symbolizing the mutual relations between human beings and the sacred.

Family: For many years, people have believed that a universal definition of family was “a ‘social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults.” Numerous scholars have argued that the defining characteristic of the ‘modern’ family (with its roots in the privileged classes of the nineteenth century) are altogether different: at least in ideology, this family is formed on the basis of affection and love; it operates on the behalf of the personality to provide psychic security; and its spouses are companions and its parents (or at least mothers) are emotional and nurturing to their innocent children. Moreover, whereas the agrarian family was all but indistinguishable from the community, some scholars suggest that relations within the contemporary family have become more greedy and valued; both as consequence and cause, relations outside of it have become more remote, specialized, rational and tenuous. The gods have written: ‘Indeed, it has become increasingly clear that “family” and related “domestic” concepts as we know them are relatively recent developments. Many of the distinguishing features of contemporary family discourse – in particular the notions of privacy and sentiment – were either absent from or unimportant to the discourse of primary social relations prior to the last few centuries.’ Mittrauer and Sieder (1982) argue that as late as the end of the Middle Ages the German language had no word for the private groups of parents and children that many currently call family. Some well-respected scholars even suggest that it is only from around the fifteenth century that Europe sees the rise of a new concept: ‘The concept of the family’. The arrangement was present, Aries contended in his groundbreaking work, but ‘the family existed in silence; it did not awaken feelings strong enough to inspire poet or artist. We must recognize the importance of this silence: not much value was placed on the family’ (Aries, 1962, p. 364).

With a busy day at work, I didn't have time to upload my edits. I will change this later tonight.

This week is super busy! Well, I made some basic changes and have the game mostly set up. I need to add a quick-reference sheet. My goal is to make the game 1 page, reference material about 3 or 4.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1cW5nkCYahiPmIJfrIL4_MoZQj3GGzSC-MUn3Ct9tkpA

I love the concept here.  However, I'm fuzzy on what player skills are rewarded, and what role the mechanics play.  My first thought is:
a) the better the players are at convincingly presenting their proposals, the better odds of success the group will reward them upon passge (which happens 11 of 12 times, right?).  The d100 die roll then randomly resolves those odds into an actuality.
b) the better the players are at simply presenting their proposals, the better odds of success the group will reward them of "being understood by the farmboy".  The d20 roll then randomly resolves those odds into an actuality.

If the farmboy does not understand something, then I guess there's a small chance he'll want to use his one veto on it.  But if he doesn't veto, then his understanding is irrelevant.

Or is thee some rule for how many points each issue adds to the tenet, deriving from those 1-100 and 1-20 ratings?  I didn't find that in the text.

David wrote:
I love the concept here.  However, I'm fuzzy on what player skills are rewarded, and what role the mechanics play.  My first thought is:
a) the better the players are at convincingly presenting their proposals, the better odds of success the group will reward them upon passge (which happens 11 of 12 times, right?).  The d100 die roll then randomly resolves those odds into an actuality.
b) the better the players are at simply presenting their proposals, the better odds of success the group will reward them of "being understood by the farmboy".  The d20 roll then randomly resolves those odds into an actuality.

If the farmboy does not understand something, then I guess there's a small chance he'll want to use his one veto on it.  But if he doesn't veto, then his understanding is irrelevant.

Or is thee some rule for how many points each issue adds to the tenet, deriving from those 1-100 and 1-20 ratings?  I didn't find that in the text.

B4GD wrote:
the shakiness of public favor by combining public reaction, public ideological shifts, and religious fervor in a demonstrative way. I needed something to mirror this in a way that was unpredictable but easily understood

I definitely agree with this. I just hadn't done it yet. My endgoal for this game is 1 page of rules, 3 pages of reference materials on fine points in games and about how things work together. It's so easy to take this overboard and get past incoming freshmen level. I will work on this tonight!

Started throwing it together into a larger document. It can be found:

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0ByPlLBKu6Jp8ZDQ2NWU0MjMtNzQwYi00YmYxLTgzOTAtYTMxNDRmZjE4Nzk4&hl=en