Plutocrat

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Gameplay

Two elements are of importance. The first are Production Factors (PF), which represent money in the game. Production Factors are the ingame currency, used to deploy cards, activate effects and so forth. If your Production Factor score hits zero, you are bankrupt and lose the game.

The second is your Reputation (REP). Reputation is highly vital. Although it cannot be used to earn Production Factors directly, Reputation is an important component for remaining as a going concern. If your reputation hits 0, you have been found guilty and are sentenced to prison, losing the game.

Setup

There are no rules in actuality to describe how many Production Factors or how much Reputation a player starts off, yet generally, the ideal amount should be 100 PFs and 20 REP.

Gameplay process cycle

Each player goes through the following phases:r

1. Replenishment phase. All characters or auxiliaries are replenished, meaning that they will be made ready for action once more. The abilities of a certain character or auxiliary may be used only once normally until the start of your next turn.

2. Main phase. At this point, a player has several choices: draw a card, play a Permanent card, sell unplayed cards to other players, or cycle a card.

Drawing a card means that the player takes one card from the Main Board, and puts it into his or her hand. You may only hold 10 cards at a time. You may sell any number of cards from your hand as you wish at any point in time, but you must first reveal the cards to be sold to public first. Additionally, whenever your sell any cards, a small percentage of the proceeds is taken away from you as a selling fee.

Cycling a card means discarding a card, face up to all, into the discard pile. Whenever the Main Board is out of cards, the discard pile must be shuffled and added back in.

A player may forgo any one of these actions, and instead play one card from his or her hand. These cards are known as permanents, because they normally stay in play for the whole duration of the game, unless something affects them in such a way that they are eliminated and placed in the discard pile.

Permanents come in a variety of flavours, but generally consist of the following:

  • Investments, which consist of investments in a variety of fields, such as agriculture, infrastructure, etc. These cards normally produce a small stream of Production Factors, and each Investment card has its own specific rules.
  • Employees, who are the staff who run your portfolio for you. Employees are controlled to you, but can sometimes be controlled by others.
  • NPCs. NPCs are non-employee personalities who have a dual purpose - they can be played at any time, but if played during an opponent's or colleague's turn, they only remain with you for that one turn. NPCs, as with other permanents, often have special rules of their own.

3. Events phase. Whenever a player performs an action during the Main Phase, he or she is required to then draw one card from the Events Deck, and then put it into play. Events represent all sorts of things, ranging from sales boosts to natural disasters, and will normally have some indiscriminate effect on players.

4. Discard Phase. Clear temporary effects, discard excess cards, and pass the turn to the next player.

A bonus of 3 PFs is awarded to any player who abstains (not due to an effect of a card previously played) from drawing, cycling, or playing Permanents during his or her Main phase.

House rules

  • A player may introduce some role-playing by choosing the cards he or she starts with; generally each player is allowed only 10 cards, and may draw a combination of nine Employees and Investments cards, and one NPC card.
  • Each player may choose to draw 1 Historical Event card at random, and put it into play for more challenge at the start of the game.

Cards

Cards are what this game is all about, and they are divided into two groups:

  • Main board cards, playable by players. These are divided into Permanents, of which only 1 card may normally be played per turn, and Actions, which can be played at any point in time as long as you are able to do so.
  • Events cards, which are triggered whenever a Permanent is played by any player during his or her Main phase or a card is either drawn or cycled by a player. Events are divided into Short-Term Events, which disappear and are removed from the game at the end of the turn, or Historical Events, which remain in play for the rest of the game.

Each card has the following statistical printout:

  • Card name
  • Card illustration
  • Card type: whether it is an Investment, Action, Short-Term Effect or otherwise.
  • Some flavour text, usually no more than 2 sentences long. Or I could be wrong on that.

Subsequently cards can be divided into: