Whilst rummaging around in my WarGames room – sorting out stuff to sell at Hereward’s WarGames show I found this:

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Back in the very early 90’s the Group including myself, had put together a compendium of all the games we had played/created/developed in the last 3-4 years. I had a few games in it – Kevin had quite a few. I remember putting it together on Windows 3.1, and then using my father’s firm to make a hundred photocopies and bind them. All good fun!! We sold quite a few of those 100 I seem to remember.

One of my games was Revolution! – a game of the French Revolution.

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A game for 15 players in which each player plays a famous person from the Revolution (Robespierre through to the King plus others) and each turn they have a state problem delivered to them in the National Assembly, and they have to debate the policy solution. The ones (or the group) that wins gain influence which help them bribe the other players to their side. A tribunal of 5 players was also set up to try any player sent there and sentence them to the guillotine if sufficient influence bribes were not forthcoming. The objective was to be last man standing and have the most influence at the end of the game.

It worked (works) as a 15 player game, with political groups, individual objectives and personal rivalry – can it be made to work as a card/board game with fewer players?

Well, yeah.

I’ve looked at it, fiddled with it and I think I have got it to a point where it could be played by 3 players, each player playing a political grouping – with any more players just joining in by selecting a character. It still needs development – the dynamic of a large group game is different to a smaller 3-4 person game so some of the mechanics will need some changing to move the game on.

I’ve decided it is worth spending some time on – and could be worth looking to produce as a game. I will be writing about the development of the game on this site as I do it.

I wonder if anyone out there still has a copy of the Compendium?