Peter Brinson

Wish I could come... sounds like a blast. Have fun!

I’d like to hear what you guys thought of the game the other night.

As I sit here thinking about any and all of the rules, I always come back to the real dynamic among real people. Jesper Juul talks about how even fictional game are ‘Half-Real’, and with Junta that is very clear. As the Minister, I was consistently my job to consider assassinations, and I wanted to do so to keep things interesting, but had certain personal boundaries that were neither outside of the game nor isolated to it. I brought my relationship to you guys to the game. The game experience was real.
The beginning of the game involved me, the owner, picking the President. Since I picked RJ, he rewarded me with my position. That made me feel loyal throughout, and he paid me consistently. And because I was the lone faculty mentor in the room, I didn’t feel comfortable appearing to have an agenda against anyone. So I used John’s joke and Jared/Rowan’s unambiguous disloyalty towards the president as an excuse to carry out assassinations.
I’ve never played a game in which everyone was so conscious of our responsibility in making the game interesting, even though it never got dull.

My thoughts: First of all, the game was freaking awesome. I want to play it again. Now that we know it better, playing it again would be even more fun because we learned a lot of the intricacies of the rules as well as strategy.

As President for almost the entire game, I have one word to use: nervous. Since I was determining the budget, it felt like anybody could turn on me at any moment. There's never enough to go around, and as I mentioned during the game, I don't think anybody feels the President should keep any money because the amount he is getting is the most secret of all. I think one of my best moves in the game was, when drawing a really horrible budget, giving away all of the money so that I wouldn't have suspicions turn on me and compromise my position.

Other fun moves were to secretly give money to allies. I gave money to Mike and John "under the table" so to speak, but knowing that others could do this only added to the suspicions. Being President is a careful balancing act of trying to convince just enough people to keep you around for the next turn while convincing those that hate you that they have no chance against your aligned forces.

Every alliance breaks. At some point somebody is going to get powerful enough to think they can take over and improve things for themselves. After you left, Peter, Diana turned on me and funded a coup against me (though this was partially because I handed John 3 millon on a turn instead of the promised 2, giving Diana less than him. While this ensured his loyalty, it also broke my alliance with Diana. The coup on the final turn of the game was long and bloody, but I ended up getting taken out. Even during this phase tensions were high... it looked like it was John and I against the rest of them, as Mike looked to be a traitor. Instead, he pulled a fantastic double-agent move that almost worked at the very end. Even after the coup, John and I almost convinced the new president to order the coup leader to the firing squad because he had the most money and John and I had nothing (we had just gone to the bank). It almost worked, but as it turned out I had too much influence in the voting and the new President wanted to keep his alliances a little stronger to begin with.

I'm happy to say I won the game, but I am certain that if we played again that nobody would remain President without attempted coups for so long. Maintaining that balancing act is hard and I think we'd all be a little more cutthroat and scheming. Which maybe is a little scary ;)

Your reasoning for who/why you carried out assassinations is pretty interesting. After you left, I made John the Minister because I figured he had a knack for it, and he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty -- it also made him more loyal, so it solidified our alliance. Of course, I probably could have used him as a general in the upcoming coup :)

Tons more to talk about, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Haha!

I hear you about bringing relationships into the game Peter. The vile assassination attempt at my home away from home (the mistress) notwithstanding, I was searching for an excuse to go after one of you guys - some perceived sleight.

Junta is intimidating and the rule-set is intricate, but the key to the good time we had is in a structure that affords and embraces both cooperation and deception.

I found myself at the center of an unusual situation at the end of the game which I believe revealed a fundamental aspect of player dynamics. Following the coup, I was elected as president for life, however the building was closing and there was only time for one more turn, with no possibility of another coup. Having selected the players who were most loyal during the coup to be in the most desirable cabinet positions, I proceeded to draw the budget, which turned out to be a considerable amount of money.

If there had been time to play a few more turns, I am reasonably certain that this would have played out in a very similar way to the rest of the game. Because this was the end, the number of plausible moves contracted dramatically. In order to have a chance of winning, I had to completely screw all of the other players by withholding as much of the budget as possible. I had to go to the bank that turn because there would be no more opportunities to do so, and the minister had to assassinate me because he knew I would have to go to the bank.

I would call this phenomenon a betrayal horizon and I believe it explains some of the problems with applying game theory to practical situations such as economics or military strategy. Even though each player is making decisions out of self-interest, during the majority of the game it is desirable to maintain some trust because it is only possible to accumulate substantial wealth through the formation of power blocs. As the game comes to an end, the value of maintaining an alliance decreases and cooperation is less likely to occur. It is only in this terminal phase that the prisoner's dilemma model of self interest and cooperation appears to be applicable. The problem of course is that in real life there is almost never a known end point to the economic or military situations to which game theory might be applied. It is therefore always in the self interest of competing actors to maintain alliances through cooperation.