Protest

by Allan Stagg 1999

A game where you expose the secrets they don't want us to know about.

The game is played on any hexed map.

The game may be played by 4 - 8 players. Each player must identify the locations of secret activities, and expose them by organising protests at those locations. Successfully targeted protests earn that player Prestige Points. When all sites have been exposed, the player with the most Prestige Points is the winner.

At the start of the game, players are given copies of the map that is to be used. The GM secretly selects 15 hexes on the map that mark the sites of activities that need to be exposed. These can be sea hexes or land hexes. Players may give names for their organisations.

Each turn a player may issue 5 information-gathering orders and organise one protest.

The information-gathering orders take the format L n (hex) (e.g. A 1 A53, or E 4 K10) L will be either A, B, C, D or E, and serves as a unique identifier for that order. n can have a value between 1 and 5, and represents the number of hexes surrounding the target hex that you wish to check for information about possible sites. The turn report will state only the order's unique identifier, and the number of sites within the area. (For the examples above, the response might be A 0, E 2.)

If a player suspects that a particular hex is the site of some illegal activity, a protest may be organised at that location by giving a Protest order. The format for this is Protest (hex) (e.g. Protest L11). If the protest is at one of the designated sites marked on the GM's map, and this site has not been previously revealed, the player organising the protest gains a number of Prestige Points, and a report of the successful protest is included in the turn report. If the protest is not targeted at the exact hex where the site is located, but is in a hex adjacent to an unrevealed site, there will be no report of the protest in the adjudication, and no impact on the player's Prestige Points. If the protest is in a hex that is not adjacent to an unrevealed site, the player will lose a number of points equivalent to the lowest number of hexes between the protest and the nearest unrevealed site. A report of the unsuccessful protest will be given in the adjudication.

Each player starts the game with 10 Prestige Points. If a player organises a successful protest, they gain 12 points. If two or more players organise successful protests in the same hex on the same turn, the points will be divided between them, rounded down where necessary. If they lose all of their Prestige points due to spectacularly unsuccessful protest, they are deemed to have lost all public credibility and are out of the game. The adjudication will give a record of each Player's current total of Prestige Points.

The game continues until all 15 sites have been revealed by successful protest, at which point the player with the greatest number of Prestige Points will be the winner. In the event of two or more players finishing with the same number of points, the player who has organised the greatest number of successful protests will be the winner.