Description

(Working Title- Unpublished Prototype)

Overview
In this game players take the roles of the "Great Houses" of the land. Over the course of several generations, those in power change. Players try to influence succession and match their House's resources to the interests of the True Power in the land (often not the actual monarch). By adding new family branches, using carefully arranged marriages, and managing grants players raise their prestige in the hopes of seizing power after the inevitable downfall of the monarchy.

Basic Play
Each player has a house display representing their larger political family. BRANCHES make up that family, beginning the game with a same number of small family branches. Each branch is represented by a card with a branch name and spaces for GRANTS. Grants represent offices, industries, resources, contacts and so on which that part of the family has control of. There are six kinds of grants: Influence (INFL) which generates the currency for play and the five areas of control: Activism (ACT), Intellectual (INT), Religion (REL), Society (SOC) and Warfare (WAR). Grants, represented by tiles, can move around throughout the game. Some branches may also have special abilities which allow special actions or modify the values of the grants attached to them.

During each turn, players may add a new branch to their House Display. Since they only may have five branches at a time, they will eventually have to Marry or merge two of those houses, creating a new branch. Each turn players gain currency in the form of influence, bid to add a branch, support those in power, and take actions. Some actions can always be taken, while others require the use of particular grant types. At the end of the turn, players check to see which Royal currently holds sway in the realm. Players score VPs based on the interests of that Royal and how well their various branches and grants match those.