Search Results for: people power

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People Power Development Update

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The People Power Development Team has been working on a revamp of People Power after testing revealed some gaps in the narrative that we wanted the game to tell. People Power is focused on the period between the end of Martial Law in the Philippines and the flight of the Marcos family in February 1986. This roughly 5 year period was marked with both violence and protest, and ended in the dramatic events of the People Power/EDSA Revolution in February 1986. Here’s a summary of the changes we’ve made:

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Joining the COIN Family – People Power’s Journey from Concept to Reality

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Welcome to the first article about People Power, Insurgency in the Philippines, 1983-1986, Volume XI of GMT’s popular COIN series! This journey started almost as soon as the first COIN volume – Andean Abyss was released back in 2012. It was designer Volko Ruhnke’s third published design, and I was already a big fan of his previous contributions: Wilderness War and Labyrinth. I saw Wilderness War as another brilliant CDG (as he himself admitted, it was an adaptation of Mark Herman’s We the People) But it was with Labyrinth, where Volko modified the standard CDG mechanics, that Volko really showed me that he just wasn’t an adapter of popular game systems, but also an innovative designer willing to take risks and see them through. One of those risks I respect is the willingness to take on obscure topics such as the French and Indian War and even more precariously, the War on Terror. Colombia and the War on Drugs was probably an even more unpopular topic in the eyes of some, but I had read Mark Bowden’s Killing Pablo as well as watched the documentary that followed later so as far as I was concerned, I could not wait for the release of Andean Abyss.

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(Not So) Minor Powers in Imperial Fever

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Imperial Fever is a game of Great Power competition in the period 1880-1914. However, the term “Great Power” is difficult to define and open to discussion. The four players in the game take on the roles of the United Kingdom, France, the Central Empires (which for game purposes comprise Germany and Austria-Hungary), and the Emergent Powers (which include the United States and Japan). However, there are other powers, both in Europe and outside Europe, that were very active or important in this period. Russia, Italy and most certainly China come to mind. On the other hand, other powers such as Spain, Portugal, or the Netherlands, had been major imperial actors until very recently and were still active in the international stage. Even Leopold II, the king of a small and recent country like Belgium, secured an important if notorious role in the colonial race starting in the 1880s.

The role of all these international actors is not neglected in Imperial Fever, even if they do not appear as player factions. The aim of this article is to explain and analyse how Imperial Fever incorporates their actions and influence.

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Pragmatism, Tension, and the Power of Cooperation in Mr. President

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I’ve gone to some lengths to try to keep Mr. President from reflecting a partisan point of view, as I have no interest in being part of any game that would further the deep divisions we already have in this country around party loyalties, personalities, and platforms. What I have tried to do is present you, the new President in game terms, with the reality that you have both a party affiliation and an opposing party to deal with. My problem-solving methods usually lean toward the pragmatic, so I tried to take the same approach with a game about the President, sometimes called the “Problem Solver in Chief.”

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Hear Rameses’ Tell How He Saved Egypt from the Sea Peoples

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For those interested, here is a cross-post from Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea and Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East Co-Designer Mark McLaughlin’s blog where he shares an audio recording of the account from Pharoh Rameses III describing his victory over the Sea Peoples. In this article, Mark also discusses the Sea Peoples as they appear in both of his ancient world games. You can also read this article on his blog here. Enjoy!

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Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East: Meet the Sea Peoples

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Below is the tenth in a series of articles from Mark McLaughlin showcasing the 16 civilizations in Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East. You can find the first nine articles in the series here.

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Struggle for Power in The Weimar Republic: KPD Play by Play, 1919 to 1921 (Part 1)

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Introduction

I came to designer Gunnar Holmbäck’s The Weimar Republic with the resolve of a time traveller determined to change History, a resolve nurtured by a grandfather’s subscription to Berlin’s Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), German New Wave director Margarethe von Trotta’s film, Rosa Luxemburg (1986), the Weimar era novels of Alfred Doblin and, most recently, the German TV series, Babylon Berlin, set in the capital’s insurrectionist streets and licentious nightclubs.

When I first joined the ranks of The Weimar Republic’s play testers as faction leader of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) aka the German Communist Party, that struggle was as close as my bookshelf and Rosa Luxemburg’s 1907 treatise, The Mass Strike, Political Parties and Trade Unions. By June of 1919 her corpse would float in Berlin’s Landwehr Canal. And so, I had my Victory Condition: to defeat by Revolution the reactionary paramilitaries or Freikorps, Luxemburg’s murderers unleashed by the fledgling Republic. Vicious realpolitik is the initial game state of The Weimar Republic, the board game.

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Buyer’s Guide to GMT’s 2024 Fall Sale

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Every year when we roll out our Yearly Sale, we get lots of requests from customers asking for a variety of information about the games that they can buy in the sale. Which games have the lowest stock levels, which games of a certain series are available, which hot games are available, which games have the highest retail values (usually for the folks who are looking to resell some or all of their sale purchases), etc. So this year, as we approach the GMT Sale that starts on Tuesday, September 3, Rachel and I have created this Buyer’s Guide to try to give you some of that information to help out with your buying choices. We encourage you to use this information and the links below to build your sale carts on the GMT website between now and Tuesday when the sale begins. I hope you find this Buyer’s Guide useful.