My former roommate and I are teaming up right now on a Black Swan game design.

At the moment, it’s a(nother infamous Richard) card game that tries to parody the Survivalist mentality while simulating the collapse of global society as a consequence of the collective exploitation of Earth. I’m not exactly sure whether its supposed to be irreverent at this point or educational…maybe both… but my goal is to build a game where everyone is responsible for the destruction of world, but no one really knows what that catastrophe will be.

So, the game mechanic creates an information exchange where each player has an incentive to know even less about what is going to happen as a result of their desire to accumulate things. As a result, it challenges the players to correctly balance the trade-off between knowledge of the future and having the correct resources for the future… with a gun toting, loot what you need, third option thrown in.

I’m hoping that there is enough depth to make it not only a quick (socially incisive) laugh, but also something that people would genuinely like to play for the strategy.