Strategic Primer is a game that I am designing. Each player takes the role of the commander-in-chief (and perhaps autocrat) of a small outpost in an imagined world, with the objective of conquering that world. This game first appeared as the testing apparatus in my eighth grade science fair project, but has undergone such extensive revision since that scarcely anything except the map remains recognizable. I am running a campaign now, which is in all-but-desperate need of players. I’ve posted about it extensively on my blog before, but in hopes of enticing some of you to join, will describe the game and what your participation would entail again.
The most concise and accurate one-sentence summary of the game that I can come up with is: “Strategic Primer is a turn-based strategy game of my own design.” Strategy, because the player normally has limited control over tactics. Turn-based, because each player submits a strategy for a period of time and receives results. While it was invented for my eighth grade science fair project, it has changed based on ideas I’ve borrowed from all sorts of games, my experiences running past campaigns, and players’ comments.
This campaign was intended to run quickly last January, at least one turn per day for the fifteen days of Calvin’s Interim term. That obviously didn’t happen, and the pace of the campaign has so far been quite slow. I have finally closed off the first turn for some of the players after many months, and am waiting on final data from one other, but because the various players’ starting positions are scattered randomly across the game-world I could introduce a new player even when the current players have progressed for several turns. The pace will depend on how much time the players can devote to the game, but probably will be no faster than one turn every week, and most likely much slower than that to begin with.
Each turn, each player submits (in this campaign, by email) a list of orders–a “strategy”–to the “Judge.” Until everyone gets up to speed, I (the Judge for this campaign) will help the players draft their strategies and revise them into acceptable form. After a final strategy is submitted, the Judge “runs” that strategy, determining based on the rules of the game, the nature of the world, and other players’ strategies what the results of the player’s orders were, and reports these results to the player as that player’s advisors, officers, and other subordinates in the game-world would have presented them.
At the beginning of the game, each player begins with a fortress (constructed according to a design he or she creates, with my help if desired), a certain amount of resources, knowledge of some scientific/technical advances (more on that later), and ten workers. Because the starting population is so small, each worker must be given individual orders, but once the settlement grows (nearly every player’s population is expected to grow exponentially for a few turns) a chain of command will form, allowing the player to give orders in more general terms.
One of the greatest “features” of the game, and one of the few surviving from the original design, is the method of scientific and technical advancement. Everyone in the game-world except for the players themselves (who, since they don’t consume food, hardly count) begins at a quasi-medieval level of technology and thought. If workers are assigned to scientific research, this level advances slowly, but the primary mechanism for advancement comes from the players. If a player can describe (or draw, or whatever) a technology, principle, or other idea well enough that I’m convinced that player understands it and that I can understand it, and if the player’s scientists or other workers have the mental capacity and mental machinery to understand it (and the tools necessary to build it if it’s a technology), that player’s scientists and mechanics gain the knowledge of that scientific or technical advance and can use it in the next turn. (There are a few more conditions related to whether a principle is true in the game-world or a technology could exist, but they’re actually looser than our world.)
I’m posting this now in hope that someone will decide to join the game as a new player. As it stands, there are not as many players as I would like, even counting the “players” that I’m controlling, which I call “AI” players. If this sounds interesting and you’d like more information or would like to join, please comment here or otherwise contact me. I, and the other players, will be grateful.
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