U.S. Political Strategy Game
I’m looking at running an extensive U.S. political strategy game, but before I invest a lot of time in fleshing out the rules, I wanted to gauge the level of interest since it would require 3-5 players in order to be successful. My thoughts on the different phases are below.
The players will take on the role of a political party vying to propose, negotiate, and pass legislation that advances their agenda and fires up their base; and run Congressional and Presidential elections to control the levers of government. To start, the players will craft a political party identity to include a name, color, and select attributes that strengthen or weaken their political support among voting blocs such as evangelicals, the youth vote, gun lobby, etc. They will also rank-order a series of agenda items that will form the basis of how they pass legislation and based on their ability to deliver on their agenda, they will receive points to be used in upcoming elections.
The game will start at the mid-term election with a blind-bid system to create our starting House and Senate for the legislative term. Each round will represent 6 months, with legislation being moved through the two chambers of Congress. Players will also manage their resources to raise funds from small and large donors, special interest groups, PACs, etc. as well as respond to local and national events on a tactical level that will influence the political capital they have within groups such as Latinos, the tech industry, agriculture, etc. that will determine the popular support they have to spend strategically on upcoming House, Senate, and Presidential elections (complete with Electoral College simulation).
Anyone interested?