Ready, Fire, Aim!
If upper management says it, it must be so.
It is so, until upper management says it isn't
so. But didn't they say that it was so? Yes,
but that was before, and that doesn't matter.
All that matters is that they're saying it isn't
so, now.
Ready, Fire, Aim! is a turn-based parody
of management upending plans by qualifying / clarifying
/ refining their pronouncements. For 3 or more players.
Setup
Print out 6 pages of cards (any 6 pages that fit
your particular cube farm, so long as you don't print
duplicate pages). Print more unique pages if you have
more players, 1 extra page per player in excess of 3.
Last page is the card back artwork, which is optional.
This game has a box in color for no reason other than
the clip art is in color.
Punch out the cards, shuffle them, find a flat surface
and two or more friends. Deal 6 cards per player. Play.
The Game Story
You and all the other players at the table are working
at the same cube farm. You're basing your projects and
planning on certain broad statements upper management has
said in the past. Every so often, upper management refines
those statements in such a way as to cause your plans to
need to be redone, sometimes in part, other times in whole.
You're just trying to finish planning a 10 stage
process. It's harder than you initially thought.
Rules
Using a mechanic obviously inspired by Flying Buffalo's
excellent Nuclear War / Escalation / Proliferation
games, players are playing 4 turns in advance. Each player
has a queue of 3 cards face down in front of them. Each
turn, s/he puts a card at the end of the queue and turns
over the card at front of the queue.
Once a card is in the queue, no one can look at it
until it is revealed. Keep track of what you've played!
Player to the dealer's left goes first on the first
round. Play proceeds to the left.
Each turn:
- Enqueue A Card: Play a card face-down
at the end of the 3 card (now 4 card) queue.
- Dequeue A Card: Turn over the card
at the front of the queue. Cards come in three
categories:
- Assertion
- An Assertion is simply a step in the
project plan that relies on something
upper management has said in the past.
Assertions are played through the
queue. When revealed, they are placed
in a binary tree. Each Assertion can
have up to two other Assertions directly
depending on it (below it), and each
Assertion can directly depend only on
one other Assertion (above it).
You can place the new Assertion
anywhere on the tree so long as those
two rules are met. It can be the new
top of the tree, or it can be one of
the bottom, or it can be a branch off
an Assertion in the middle that only
has one other Assertion directly stemming
from it.
- Contradiction
- A Contradiction is upper management refining
their previous statement in such a way as
to make assumptions based on previous
Assertions invalid.
Contradictions are likewise played
through the queue. When revealed, a
Contradiction causes all Assertions in play
of the same type to be discarded as well
as all Assertions depending on them,
for all players. Someone Contradicting
the right (or wrong) Assertion can cause
all your Assertions in play to be
discarded.
Yes, Contradictions you play
Contradict Assertions you have in play
too.
- Exemption
- An Exemption is you successfully appealing
to upper management (or even executive
management) to allow your plan to proceed
in spite of the Assertion being Contradicted.
Exemptions are not played through
the queue. Instead, when a Contradiction
of the same type as your Exemption is played,
you may play your Exemption and not have to
discard any Assertions of that type.
After you have played the Exemption,
draw a card to make up for your hand being
short. As a side benefit of playing an
Exemption, it is now your turn as well.
- Draw A Card: At the end of your turn,
after you have enqueued and dequeued a card,
draw to bring your hand up to 6 cards.
When the draw pile is empty, shuffle the discard
pile and turn it into the draw pile.
Winning
Each Assertion is one stage in the plan. Whomever
can lay out 10 Assertions has successfully planned out
the 10 stage plan. Next challenge is implementing it,
but that's another day.
Optional Rules
What's a game without optional rules?
- Reworking the Plan: A player can
opt not to discard and not play the card and
instead rearrange his or her Assertions in play
into any binary tree structure. Note that
s/he still must enqueue and dequeue a card,
and still will draw a card at the end of the
turn.
- Sudden Death: instead of shuffling the
discard deck, place discarded cards face-up
at the bottom of the draw pile. When someone
draws the last face-down card, the game is over
and whomever has the most Assertions in play
wins.
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Links
Disclaimer
Unfortunately, I do have some experience
with the nightmare that is planning based on assumptions
of what upper management wants / says / thinks, only
to have the plans rendered partially / mostly / wholly
useless because those assumptions were in error.
Author's Notes
Of all games so far, this I hope to make use of
the open source aspect in this game. This game lends
itself very easily to lampoon executive idiocy and
mis-management. Most people to whom I describe the
game have suggestions for more cards, either in the
tech field or in their respective field.
To everyone who has a suggestion, download
the source file, get Star Office and make
some cards. The source file even has a template
page with the card borders and some text you can
edit to make your own.
How we play it: We play a hodge-podge of
the existing rules. If someone manages to get 10
Assertions on the table, s/he wins and the game is over.
Otherwise, we play with a discard pile the first time
we go through the deck, then play it with the Sudden
Death rule the second time around.
Oh, and we use the Rework the Plan rule
as well.
This makes for short games, so we get a chance
to pay back other players for particularly well- or
ill-timed plays that wipe out large portions of our
respective Assertion trees. This is a fun and nasty
little game.
I'll be de-fanging the text and posting a non-techie,
family-friendly version on the
bizcardgames web page as well sometime soon.
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