New World Order: The Board Game!

Without getting into how egregiously stupid a terrorist futures market would be and what kind of anarchy it would play out on the world theater, one wonders what kind of person would want to bet on something as random as this. Probably the same amoral deviants that thought up the possible Fox reality show that followed people attempting suicide (an unconfirmed rumor).

Then again, I remember my days of playing D&D in the basement and could sympathize with somebody wanting to emulate the action-adventure world of an international terrorist. There are a number of board games already out there that appeal to this ingrown man-child's desire for world-domination-to-teach-them-all-a-lesson. Let's take a look at a few of them.

First off is Risk, the most popular of the lot. Great game, accesible to all, but at it's heart is as sophisticated as a game of Cee-Lo. A broad generalization of international military politics.

Stratego suffers from the same inaccuracies as Risk, but I still wanted to mention it since it never gets the respect it deserves. Damn fine game.

There are a number of Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules with modern themes like Future Wars, cyberhacking, or visiting Toledo. I really haven't kept up since Monster Manual II where they started bringing in Alien species that looked like geometric shapes. Give me the olden days of hobgoblins and orcs and two-handed bags of holding and I'll be a happy man. Of course, these too boil down to dice games that nobody plays in favor of just reading the stories involved. If memory serves me well, this is how most D&D games I played went:

Dungeon Master: So, you walk through the cavern and come upon a gelatinous cube standing near a pit in the center of the room. What do you do?

Player: I dunno, kill the gelatinous thingy

DM: Well okay, but how? With what? Your Mace +3 of grappling won't do anything to it.

P: Whatever, how about I use my psionics to fool it into thinking I'm it's long lost mother and lead it into the pit.

DM: [Keeps rolling dice untill a high number comes up] You did it!

P: Yay!

If you really want to get into geopolitics and the new world order, Diplomacy is the way to go. I can't really remember the rules, or if there are any, but it involved a lot of working out of treaties and brokering deals, just like the real leaders do! Becomes incredibly boring within a matter of seconds (unless you use psionics).

—September 2nd, 2003

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