Mayhem and Ministers

Created by Ruwani Kiringoda and Jay Shannahan.

Mayhem and Ministers is a board game for 3-6 players inspired by the concept of identity.

Each player takes on the roles of ministers of a realm whose ruler is dying, with no living heir to the throne.  The ministers compete to increase their individual renown in the realm, with the one having accrued the most renown at the end of the game becoming the new ruler.  The catch is that there are also problems that the realm will face that the minsters must defeat as a whole if they and the realm have a chance to survive to see a new ruler take the throne.   

The identity of the starting realm is randomly generated at the start of the game.  The identity of each player's character is also randomly generated at the beginning.  From there, it is up to the players to develop the identities of both their individual characters, and the realm as a whole. 

The first phase of the round involves individual characters attempting to conquer additional lands to add to the realm.  To accomplish this, each player takes turns drawing from a communal pool of realm resources.  Those who go first get the first pick of the resources.  Each round the turn order changes, and the player who goes first one round goes last the next round.  All players get an equal number of turns going first.    

Those going first can either take a fair share, ensuring that everyone has a chance to defeat their individual conquests, or they can take a larger portion to guarantee their own victory while denying other players their own conquests.  Every character that is successful in their conquests gains renown and that land is added to the realm to provide more resources.  Characters who fail get nothing and the realm does not gain the land they sought to win. 

How well the players did as a whole comes into play during the second phase of the round, where the realm faces a grand crisis that all characters must work together to defeat.  If too many resources were spent during the first phase, or if not enough characters were successful in conquering additional lands for resources, the realm as a whole may not be strong enough to overcome the crisis.  Failure for overcoming a crisis can results in characters losing strength, characters dying, the realm losing lands and resources, or the realm falling entirely.

 The game is designed to set the identity of the individuals on the competitive level against the identity of the group as a whole on the cooperative level.  It is still in the initial balancing stages, but we are working to have it in a state for play testing as soon as possible.