I may have seen this post too late for it to be of any interest, but I believe the Avalon Hill board game Magic Realm is just straightforwardly cohabitative—or at least, it defines an effectively cohabitative win condition, even if it also defines a competitive one. It’s also unusually open/simulationist* for a board game, which seems likely to be correlated.
(* not in the sense of “realistic”, but in the sense of “we have made a world and rules to determine what happens when you do something in it”)
From the fan-written tutorial:
“At the end of the game, a score is calculated for each character by comparing the character’s totals in the above five categories with the Victory Requirements that he selected prior to the start of the game. Each character with a positive score wins (there can be several winners). The character with the highest score is the victor (there can only be one victor). Winning the game means that your character was successful in fulfilling the Victory Requirements that you selected. Being the victor means that your character was the most successful character in that game, even if you failed to get a winning score.”
This is interesting. In general the game does sound like the kind of fun I expect to find in these parts. I’d like to play it. It sounds like it really can be played as a cohabitive game, and maybe it was even initially designed to be played that way?[1], but it looks to me like most people don’t understand it this way today. I’m unable to find this manual you quote. I’m coming across multiple reports that victory = winning[2].
Even just introducing the optional concept of victory muddies the exercise by mixing it up with a zero sum one in an ambiguous way. IME many players, even hearing that, will just play this for victory alone, compromise their win condition while pretending not to be doing that in hope of deceiving other players about their agenda, so it becomes hard to plan with them. This wouldn’t necessarily ruin the game but it would lead to a situation where those players are learning bad lessons.
I may have seen this post too late for it to be of any interest, but I believe the Avalon Hill board game Magic Realm is just straightforwardly cohabitative—or at least, it defines an effectively cohabitative win condition, even if it also defines a competitive one. It’s also unusually open/simulationist* for a board game, which seems likely to be correlated.
(* not in the sense of “realistic”, but in the sense of “we have made a world and rules to determine what happens when you do something in it”)
From the fan-written tutorial:
“At the end of the game, a score is calculated for each character by comparing the character’s totals in the above five categories with the Victory Requirements that he selected prior to the start of the game. Each character with a positive score wins (there can be several winners). The character with the highest score is the victor (there can only be one victor).
Winning the game means that your character was successful in fulfilling the Victory Requirements that you selected. Being the victor means that your character was the most successful character in that game, even if you failed to get a winning score.”
This is interesting. In general the game does sound like the kind of fun I expect to find in these parts. I’d like to play it. It sounds like it really can be played as a cohabitive game, and maybe it was even initially designed to be played that way?[1], but it looks to me like most people don’t understand it this way today. I’m unable to find this manual you quote. I’m coming across multiple reports that victory = winning[2].
Even just introducing the optional concept of victory muddies the exercise by mixing it up with a zero sum one in an ambiguous way. IME many players, even hearing that, will just play this for victory alone, compromise their win condition while pretending not to be doing that in hope of deceiving other players about their agenda, so it becomes hard to plan with them. This wouldn’t necessarily ruin the game but it would lead to a situation where those players are learning bad lessons.
I’d be curious to know what the original rulebook says, it sounds like it’s not always used today?
The first review I found (Phasing Player) presents it as a fully zero-sum game, completely declined to mention multi-win outcomes (43 seconds).