AFFINITY, a Boardgame of Needs and Wants

Editor’s note:  When I met Black Juggernaut in the ether of cyberspace, they agreed to stay with me for a bit while I developed AFFINITY, and provide “muse services.”  BJ was very good at this, even inspiring many of the central mechanics (the specifics of the Needs/Wants system that gives the game its namesake was inspired by a long, heated conversation we had about the principles of ethical residential zoning).  They came and went from my domicile at will, and at no time did I attempt to restrain or confine them.  Black Juggernaut was compensated for their services.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the tutorial video I commissioned from them contained various barely-hidden accusations about abuse and even kidnapping (???).  

I just want to use this statement to make things absolutely clear: at no time did I restrict Black Juggernaut’s movement, force them to wear a bag over their head, or coerce them into caring for my taxidermied animals.  Any accusations to the contrary are absolute fucking bullshit. 

PLAY AFFINITY

AFFINITY is a two player abstract board game where the pieces change sides based on their individual agendas.  Most of the game is some kind of mockery of resource management eurogames, community building exercises, and serious games in general.  Shoutout to my dad, an architect, for turning me onto “Land Use Games,” these beautifully autistic exercises of performative city planning that read like STEM sorcery to me but must be pretty cool if you’re real good at math.  One particular land-use game, Blocks and Lots, served as a major inspiration for AFFINITY.  

There are two sides, Community and Blight.  Each side starts with 2 pieces.  8 Neutral hobos, which both sides can move, begin in the center of the board.  Every turn cycle (a Community turn, then a Blight turn), the day advances and the person at the top of the Housing Manifest moves into your community.  Each piece has a desire, which indicates how attractive conditions in your city are to them.  If the community has a lot of what they want, they’ll be higher on the move-in que. 

After arriving on the board, the character’s needs/wants are assessed.  If a character’s need is satisfied, they’re Neutral; both sides can control them.  If both their need and their want are satisfied, they’re under Community’s control.  If they don’t have their need, they’re under Blight’s control.

Some of these needs and wants are related to housing (“I want to live near the University”), some are based on proximity to other characters (“I can’t be near minors”), others are highly specific and political (“I want Open Carry to be legal”).

Agendas like the latter depend on something called the Referendum, which occurs every friday instead of the move-in phase.  The side that has more pieces with [Worker] tags, representing potential voters, gets control of the Referendum.  During the Referendum, you can pass “Acts,” which satisfy certain characters’ needs or add new rules to the game.  The Women’s Rights Act, for example, protects women from capture while it’s active.  The Foetal Right To Life Act flips one of the characters to Community if she’s Neutral, and prevents her from using her special ability. 

As you can imagine, it’s all pretty wacky.

This is Dokapon Chess.  This is Dokapon Chess.  This is Dokapon Chess.

Whereas chess models a struggle between two kingdoms, this models the creation of a community full of abrasive ideologue shitheads who don’t like each other.  With dangerous superheroes.  Uh, yeah.  (This is Dokapon Chess).

I don’t want to say much about the object of the game.  As I designed it, I realized that playing it as a seriousface game of high strategy is probably not very satisfying. The best way I can describe this game is that it exists as a means for setting up fairy chess scenarios that conjure really nasty social problems (urban blight, homelessness, culture warz).  Not so you can solve them, but so that you can watch them fall apart all over the board.  Then talk about them later.  This isn’t a social statement.  It’s a flavoring for “story after“¹ play where you’re also given an excuse to say shit like “After I passed the Transgender Bathrooms Act, Mousetrap became part of the Community and that let me kill the TERF bitch with a lucky booby trap.”

I’m releasing this in alpha form with the hope of adding more characters and mechanics later. There are probably some bugs.

Enjoy.

CONTROLS:

Left mouse button: select your pieces/move pieces

Right click neutral pieces: Enter neutral mode (move/capture with neutral pieces)

HOLD Right mouse button: enter Neighborhood Mode (left click spaces for space info, double left click to return to the board)

Scroll Wheel click to see info about enemy pieces (if you encounter a bug where the pieces are invisible or transparent, try scroll wheel clicking anywhere on the board)

Pass button to pass your turn.  Special button while a piece is selected to use a piece’s special.

(Credits links available in game client)

1. Quote from the link: “Story After” is an archaeological process, where you look at the events of a game session which didn’t involve a preplanned story and didn’t involve much in the way of narratively-based decision-making on the part of anyone during the session and then coming up with a story which is a narrative of the exciting stuff that happened in the session; war stories hailing from a very old school Dungeons & Dragons campaign qualify as this.