The New People’s Army (NPA) has its genesis in the Hukbalahap rebellion, fought by tenant farmers after World War II. By the late 1960s, the social conditions which had led the Huks to rebel remained unresolved and led to the formation of the New People’s Army by José María Sison and Bernabe Buscayno. The NPA was not the only insurgency fighting the Filipino Goverment – the Bangasamoro people of Mindanao were in the early years of the Moro Independence struggle, which peaked during the mid 70s, before a peace agreement was brokered by Muammar Ghaddafi in 1976.

In People Power the Reformer faction encompasses all the liberal, nonviolent, political opposition to the Marcos regime, including politicians, Catholic leaders, and regular citizens who were willing to voice their disdain for Marcos and his cronies. However, there is little doubt that the voice of the Reformers was, for many years, one man: Benigno Aquino Jr, known to Filipinos simply as “Ninoy.”

The first COIN project I worked on was Bruce Mansfield’s Gandhi. Even as a relative newcomer to the COIN Series, I knew that Gandhi was a very different game. The model of nonviolent resistance presented in Gandhi sparked my imagination; where else could conflicts be modeled using these principles? As I continued to read I was surprised to find that one of the most common examples of how nonviolent resistance works was the People Power Revolution of 1986. I was even more surprised to find that Ken was already very far along in his design of People Power.

Unlike other COIN games, People Power does not simply measure the Support for, or Opposition to, the Government. In most COIN games, Support and Opposition measure the willingness of a population to actively enable or hinder the operations of a faction through supplying guerillas, providing intelligence, and supporting Government operations.

Whenever I develop a game, I am always looking for ways to make the narrative shine. Usually, that involves consistent terminology, clear rules, concise player aids, and suggestions on what tweaks can be made to help the game get out of the way of the player, and allow for full immersion in the story. Occasionally more major changes occur, and while painful, these almost always improve the end result.

People Power is one of the latter cases. Ken Tee (the designer of People Power) has always had a strong personal story in mind for People Power, but playtesters were not experiencing the narrative in the way Ken intended. One major hurdle was the MNLF (Moro) faction, which ended up being dropped, but the main narrative issue with People Power was the victory condition for the Government. While many COIN factions use Victory conditions centered around Support for the Government (US in Fire in the Lake, Batista in Cuba Libre, France in Colonial Twilight), the Marcos regime was fundamentally unlike these governments.