Because for God's sake, we can use a healthy dose of wit in our life!
First of all, read
The Guardian's eloquent article on what power tabletop games have. Learning how you and others can (insert best and worst adverb here) behave in simulative (is this a legit word) situation, getting a major hit in your brain when the game's scenario makes you realize you've turned into this mass-murderer, and a refreshing way to gain high amount of information...are just some of what games give you.
1. Reverse Role Play
If you could be your Boss for a day, how would you (write email, structure work, plan work hours/bonus/trainings etc, treat others) and how would you expect the person holding your actual position be? Check
this website for example, and expect chaos powdered in sarcasm to flood in.
2. What if, there is a company that offer companies to "gamify part of workload" to keep innovative and highly creative output from their employees. Something along the line of
this.
3.
Boring Games. It says "How to make work fun by these games", and...you guessed it, fun NOT!
4. A game that combines history, politics, and mind-twisting strategies:
Twilight Struggle
“Twilight Struggle makes you feel like you’re constantly under attack on
all fronts, that every decision you make is important or even globally
consequential, and that you have to pick between the best of bad or even
catastrophic options... and that’s when you’re winning. Come to think
of it, it probably feels a bit like being a superpower engaged in a
tense standoff with a similarly powerful but ideologically opposing
hegemon.”
5.
Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia
"Euphoria is a worker-placement game for 2-6 players. Which dice are your
workers? The number on each dice represents that worker's knowledge, which
you will compare to the knowledge of other players' workers throughout
the game. The more you send your workers throughout the city and the more
workers you add, the more they discover about their twisted society. If
they learn too much, they might desert your cause.
You also have a few
elite recruits at your disposal: one who has pledged allegiance to you
and the other who has yet to be convinced. You can inspire and use that
reticent recruit by reaching certain milestones in the game or by letting
other players unwittingly reach those milestones for you. Your path to
victory is paved with the sweat of your workers, the strength of your
allegiances and the tunnels you dig to infiltrate other areas of the
world, but the destination is a land grab in the form of area control.
You accomplish this by constructing markets that impose harsh
restrictions of personal freedoms upon other players, changing the face
of the game and opening new paths to victor. You can also focus on
gathering artifacts from the old world, objects of leisure that are
extremely rare in this utilitarian society.
What are you willing to
sacrifice to build a better dystopia?
And the designers of this game also
crowdsource ideas for updates on the game.
They archive all their updates, plans, and funding proposals on
Kickstarter.
6.
Careers
Someone somewhere mentioned this was a good game, but it sounds lame to me.
"
Careers is a game where the players set their own
victory conditions. A player may choose to pursue Fame, Happiness,
Money, or a combination of all three. The limitation being that the
total number of "points" earned in the 3 categories must total 60. eg.
60 Happiness, 0 Fame, 0 Money; 20 of each; or any other combination.
The players endeavor to fulfill their goal by going through any number
of different "occupation paths". All paths have some prerequisite for
entry, and benefits accrue from going through any of the paths more than
once. The different occupations are designed to be suited to different
strategies, eg. Hollywood is good for fame points, while "Going to Sea"
is good for happiness. In the end it is the player (or team of
players) who gets to their pre-set goal first who will be the winner,
and achieve everything they ever wanted in life."
7. In an interesting reference from Careers, here is an excellent sample of how a little creativity can go a long way.
Surviving the World, is apparently a popular photo webcomic where you can enroll to get educated on their lessons.
more coming...