Terminal Cancer
Terminal Cancer is a game based on "chaos theory"
and GM'd by computer simulation. The scenario is that the
booze, fags, and large doners with extra chilli have finally
caught up with Smiffy and he's contracted cancer. Each
player is a different type of cell, half of which are cancerous
and the other half benign. Each cell interacts with the others by
means of a simple algorithm which players have to deduce through
the course of the game (a bit like "Mornington
Crescent"!).
There are 6 locations which can be infested. If at the end, four locations have a majority of cancer cells then I snuff it. If there are 3 cancerous locations then my life is in the balance and the total number of cells of each type are counted up to determine my fate. If only two locations are stricken then I pull through - hooray!
The game is for 6 players and runs over 5 turns. Black, Green and Yellow are the "bad boys" and Red, White and Blue are the guys trying to save my sorry ass.
The orders are very simple. On turn 1 you place 10 of your cells in a single location. On turn 2, you place 20 and so on. At any time you can withdraw any number of your own cells from any number of locations if you feel they may be counterproductive. Collusion is permitted.
After cell placement, 1000 interactions take place in each location - a random cell meets another random cell. The possibilities for each interaction are:
a) Nothing happens
b) One of the cells is destroyed
c) A new cell of a different colour is created
The computer program was written using Visual Basic 3 (old 16-bit version).
The interaction algorithms are hard-coded so you'll need a copy of VB to change the rules.
Dowload the EXE and runtime files (290KB)
By Richard Smith 1999