New Rule

Introduction: What good is it to defend the rights of the powerful? Little enough in real life, but in Hominist, victory depends on it. Take up the cause of oppressed men everywhere! In this game, players face a deck evenly divided by “gender:” their task is to upset the balance and uneven the odds. Subvert equality and success will be yours!

Players: 2-4

Materials: One standard deck of playing cards.

Setting Up: Shuffle and deal hands of six cards to each player, setting aside the remainder into a draw pile. Draw the top card from this pile and lay face-up as the first card in the discard pile. Designate a first player; play proceeds to the left.

How to Play: Each player’s objective is accumulate as many unbalanced pairs as possible each round. Cards are divided into “genders:” red cards are female and black cards are male, with one exception: all face cards are the gender of the character they depict (queens are female and jacks and kings are male). Pairs are formed of imbalanced pairs of opposing genders: one red and one black card of unequal rank. Any two cards that obey this rule may be used in a pair as long as the male is dominant — that is, as long as the black card is the higher (aces are low in Hominist).

The strength of the pair is determined by the difference between their values, excepting face cards (see below). At the end of each round, tally the total value of all played pairs to determine the player’s score for the round. However, every unpaired red card a player holds at the end of the round counts against them, so this value must be subtracted from the value of their pairs.

Matriarchs and Patriarchs: All face cards in the game are treated specially. A face card may be played in any male-dominant pair as normal, but the value of the pair is determined by the sum of the two values, instead of the difference. All face cards are worth ten points each, but they are ranked according to the standard progression (low to high: jack, queen, king) for purposes of determining dominance. Remember: face cards are the gender they depict, regardless of suit.

Each turn, players first refill their hand to six cards. They observe the top card in the discard pile and choose their action:

• If they are able or willing, they may take up the top card from the discard pile and use it in a pair. After the top card has been removed, the revealed card beneath it becomes the new top card, immediately available to be used in a pair. The only limit to the number of pairs a player may play each turn is the number of cards in their hand. All pairs must be formed of one card from the player’s hand and the top discard card; players may not play pairs using two cards from their hand. When they are finished playing pairs, their turn ends.
• If they are unable or unwilling to play a pair this turn, they may choose either to draw and discard a new card, or pass one card from their hand to the player on their left, after which their turn ends.

Winning the Game: Rounds continue until all the cards in the draw pile have been drawn and discarded. At the end of the round, the player with the most pair points gains a game point. Play continues until the predetermined number rounds has been completed (suggested: five), at which point the player with the most game points is the winner.

Next: Designing “Hominist”:

This game is the fifth and, I think, the last of my Grandiloquent Game Design series. I’ve found the Dictionary to be a rewarding and inspiring source of game designs, but I feel I may have exhausted the best it has to offer—at least for now. I’ll be moving on and trying new things for a little while. In any case, the word of the week:

hominist - one who advocates equal rights for men.

As I wrote in the introduction, this is a position no one takes anymore because it has long since been triumphant. What good is it to defend the rights of the powerful? Philosophical or ideological arguments aside (and don’t get me wrong, I love to argue), it is pretty well accepted that advocating the rights of men, especially at the expense of women, is ethically reprehensible. That’s why I thought it would make a good game Of course, I subverted the meaning a bit. In this game, players don’t advocate equality: they advocate superiority. But then, in real life the line between those two is so often blurred I don’t think I’m going to cause much of a stir.

The design was sparked by the realization that a deck of playing cards has gendered characters, and an imbalance of them: two men for every woman. After much reflection on that imbalance, and on the inherent imbalances produced when the rights of one group are advocated at the expense of the privilege of another, I decided to make a game about imbalance. I considered a number of options for core mechanics, but they were all either highly derivative and repetitive, or they were just inherently flawed and completely impractical. The idea of forming “unbalanced pairs” was a shot in the dark: I just started writing it, and the mechanic solidified as the words were written. The imbalance also seemed lead to a natural scoring mechanic—the difference between the values. I specified that pairs must be male dominant to keep the fiction, and I assigned a strategic bonus to seeking face cards: queens are powerful but dangerous figures, and can only be “pacified” and rendered into positive points by, essentially, “marrying” them to kings—the only card with a value high enough to dominate them. Oh, the metaphors abound!

In the end, the game has a number of unconventional mechanics not often seen in card games: the unbalanced pairs completely transform the carefully-balanced odds, and I have no idea if that will turn out to be successful. This is one I’m really going to have to playtest. I feel I might have hit upon something here, but I don’t want to put on airs until I have data to support it. If you, the readers, get a chance, give this one a go and tell me how it plays.

Tags: Game Design //