The Lifelong Legacy Game

Your up! Have you ever played a legacy game with family or friends? Many game makers have legacy versions of games, where the game is played over multiple sittings, each time progressing deeper into the story. Games like Charterstone, my favorite, Ticket to Ride, a popular train themed game, or Risk, if world domination is your shtick, are just a couple examples. Some take weeks, months or even years to complete, depending on how often you play in those parameters.

One game, can boast a life long playtime. Motherhood. A fun-filled, sometimes aggravating, even heartbreaking game, where the player must accomplish the seemingly impossible task, of raising a human being, to completion, without wanting to terminate the character, and start over. What the maker of the game does not tell you is, that once you begin the game play, you can never leave and it never ends.

Motherhood, is a strategic game, that incorporates battles, war too sometimes, campaign plotting, bribery, good player relationship connections, stealth, and most importantly, a whole hell of a lot of luck. Rewards come, intermittently throughout the game, and the winner, gets a whole, mature and mentally sound progeny. Get this, though, Even when you think, it’s over, and you have won, lost, or tied, the game keeps going. It recharges and reboots, with more advanced characters, or meeple, if you are a nerdy geek like me. It’s like the game of Life, after you get the little car with family pegs in it, That’s where this game, starts.

Your meeple, produces a baby. The baby had its health meter, which needs to be watched at all times. Run out of health or manna, and the little meeple suffers, immeasurably. If that happens, you lose. Well you both, lose. Anyway, not only do you feed your baby meeple or meeplettes (my created word for little meeples), but you train it throughout its lifespan. Training is a complex and intricate coordination and weaving of strategy and player/meeple relations. Sometimes, the meeplettes, resist, reject, or dramatize training, and sometimes your meeplette just cannot finish the training or maybe is not the right kind of character for that specific type.

For instance, you can’t train a knight to be an elemental meeple. You get the point, you all play games of one kind or another. Admit it. So a ‘sage’ meeple must understand the meeplettes talent, skills, and propensities, in order to make it a successful viable adult meeple.

All throughout the game, outside forces, enemy, villain, and friendlies, interact and have an effect on every aspect of the mini character, so often the wise gamer will have to use strategy to guide the youngling into fruitful and character building pursuits. When resistance, has been armored by the budding padawan, you must use good planning and yes, sometimes bribery to coax cooperation.

Stealth is an important tool, when and if your, growing progeny, lies, begs, or hides truth or artifacts, they don’t want you to know about. After all, the more information and skills you have in that area, the more likely you are to have continued success throughout the campaign.

As in all character development, you will have times of disagreement or outright defiance, causing all out war. One side will win, even in a tie, and if you are fortunate and a particularly adept player, you may only have small skirmishes or battles.

In all cases, luck has a huge impact on gameplay. And let me tell you, it is not to be underestimated or disregarded. It is essential because the parameters are often out of the control of the adult meeple.

Okay, so you move on to the advanced player, part of the game, you use all your tools, and wisdom, strengths, and talent, getting through adolescence. Now you enter the tough part of the game where, battles are the norm, war seems inevitable, communication has diminished or even halted altogether, making it almost impossible to have a peace accord. Your manna has diminished, because you have a litany of skirmishes here and there, and you don’t often think to rebuild your health meter, or buy manna, somehow. You throw a white flag up more times than you’d like just to keep the peace talks going, and you hope to all that you believe in, that this too shall pass. And it does, trust me it does.

All throughout the game, coins pay for and fund training, bribery, manna, (lots of manna), battles and your war. War is expensive and feeding your troop or growing meeple, requires a lot of coin.

Suddenly, the game takes a turn and your , now near adulthood, meeple, goes off to create his own mini side game. Finally, the game is over, and your player can end it, peacefully, and get the rewards of the game won, or suffer penalty for infractions and or poor planning. But no! The game has not ended, but an expansion has been added, modifying the game, in a new way.

Now you have an ally in another sector of the board. He is your army of one, and will still require reinforcements and the protection of your army. He may run out of supplies and as his chief, you will always want to supply a troop, or they might, fall back into your territory. This can be taxing on both meeples. So, you do what you can to reinforce their growth.

With the new expansion, you still train, and support your fledgling, though it is in a less inclusive manner. The game continues.

It’s not boring game, or one that you hate to play all this time, even if you gripe a lot. You love this game, you relish it, enjoy it to your core. When you take a break from it, you can’t wait to get back to it. It has its moments of shear exhaustion and tedium, its sacrifices and failures. Lots of failures. Failures you feel you make and maybe, in the long run, they are successful. It also has incredible, rewards for small wins and large ones.

Your youngling’s success, is a reward. So too, is their deep attachment and relationship with the founding meeple, or mother ship, for you aliens out there (yes because we are all inclusive gamers, here). But you know you have won the legacy of the game, when all your work and love of the game, shows appreciation and tells you they value what and how you instructed them to play the game. That is better than amassing coins. It is the one victory point you are trying to win. When you get it, nothing can take it from you. You have a legacy.