The Final Reformation

I've always wanted to honor Christ with my love for designing and playing board games and man is the market slim. I kept asking myself "why are Christ (Christian) themed games so cheesy and broken?". They are either a mock up of monopoly or some trivia game, focus on only Biblical stories or historical accounts, or are bogged down by mundane Scriptural references to hide messy and uninspired mechanics. I wanted to fix that.

The Final Reformation (working title) is a fictional, yet scripturally inspired account of the battle for truth in the distant future. The Church is corrupt, world powers are collapsing, and Christ's name is far from view. You, a team of radical modern disciple (RMD) are to combat the world with the truth of Christ's name once more, gathering the inheritance of God from the east to the west.

This is a list of all the current mechanics and themes with a brief description:

Personalities/Gifts/Weaknesses You will create a deck out of two randomly selected personality traits and a weakness. You will choose a major trait - taking all the cards for that trait, keeping it face up so you can use the gift special ability throughout the game, a minor trait - taking only ten cards of your choice for that trait, placing it face down as your ministry tracker, and combine them with the cards of your weakness to create your deck. We are all uniquely designed to serve God. We are also completely human and struggle with temptations, but this does not render us hopeless because the grace of God loves a repentant heart.

Tactic vs. Stronghold You are trying to match your three pronged tactic with the three pronged population cards to gain the best result by matching them up or using faith. Different people need different kinds of ministry and its our job to be effective, but we must ultimately rest in God's sovereignty.

Passion/Action and Repentance You will balance your Passion and Action by choosing certain actions so that when you draw a weakness card you will not have to spend too much time repenting and can return to the ministry. Repentance is a daily occurrence, but when we have a moral failure, we must go through the due process of removing ourselves from our position and repenting fervently, especially in leadership.

The Gardener Action Wheel A rodel mechanic where you may only execute the action your piece is currently on so, communicating and working together is key. As a body of believers we must band together and know that all people are at different points in their walk when we minister and we will not always be in the same season.

Population Wheel You must manage the lost of the world and those who have gone astray in the church. Depending on how effective your ministry is some may be saved and some may harden their hearts towards the gospel. Managing the ratios between these populations will determine the environment of the game and the state of your disiciples. We cannot choose how people react, but we can do all we can to do what is right and minister to people with unconditional love.

Locations of Missions Each Location will have 1-3 population cards under them. In order to make the saved populations into disciples, you will execute the locations ability, and gain all of the saved from a chosen population card. Typically the Locations ability will change something in one or multiple population cards making location and population card interaction crucial. When we are on the mission field, our presence impacts the world. We must be wise and courageous with the gospel in hand.

Disciples The state of your disciples will determine your victory points as well as your effectiveness in the ministry. They may increase in loyalty to Christ and you, experience persecution, or even face martyrdom. Our relationships with the ones we serve and serve with is incredibly important. Sticking with each other through persecution and death honors God.

Fruits of the Spirit Each of your cards has a fruit on them that you can place in front of you. Exhausting these will allow you to execute abilities on the field. When we express the fruits of the spirit, we open up opportunities for God to work in our lives. The more and more we spend time with God the greater He will reveal Himself.
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These are some brief ideas. My idea is to make a kind of modern reformation type game where you are fighting against the heresies of the Church and the wickedness of the world. I like the deck creation as it gives you a specific role to play and also shows the reality of sin as you battle your own issues that are scattered throughout your deck ("Thorn in the Flesh")

I know this is somewhat a controversial theme, but I thought it was too good to pass up. It feels fresh to me and escapes the above issues that I mentioned. There might even be Catholic robots you'll have to mow down in order to preach the truth (I'll stop, i'll stop...). Anyway, many of these mechanics are surface level and I hope to gain some insight from you all!

Thank you.