Deluxe Illuminati: The Servants of Cthulhu Solitaire Challenge
An Ongoing Story of Solitaire, Sacred Cows, and Condensation
In 1982, Illuminati arrived at game stores across the nation, and the world (and I) has never quite been the same since. The card game of shadowy organizations focused on global domination blended history, fandom, conspiracy theories, and ripped-from-the-headline stories to create a game experience that still captures players’ imaginations 40 years later. The original game has had spinoffs, a collectable card version, and still pops up on websites claiming the game is more than just an amusement. (Just take our word for that.)
The rules recommend that you play the game with four or more players. But, in this time of plague and isolation, few of us have the player count required to make this game shine. It’s a very visual game, with review of player’s power structures, the number of special cards a player has stashed, and keeping an eye on how fluffy a player’s money pile is make it hard to play over video.
As the events guy for Steve Jackson Games, most of my job is currently filing things away into a folder for use in 2021. So, in order to be a currently useful part of the team, I’ve reached back to my heady days at Mayfair Games, where my job was to evaluate, develop, and choose games for publication. My work with Steve Jackson Games predates Mayfair by a decade, with my first forays into the professional side of hobby gaming volunteering to demonstrate games and run convention events in the 1990’s. So my roots run deep with my current company, and Illuminati was central in my passion for the company and gaming in general, even as my professional career took me to other companies and responsibilities.
I’ve worked with hundreds of designers, and it’s easy to mold and develop a game that no one has seen before. It’s very much another thing to take an existing game, especially one that has the pedigree of Illuminati, and decide you’re going to tinker around with the engine. Will you ruin it? Will the designer (the guy who also signs my paychecks) appreciate the cheek of someone saying they want to make a unicycle out of his sedan? And, bluntly, is it really even necessary?
Let’s set the Wayback Machine for 2001. I’m concurrently volunteering for Cheapass Games and they’ve released a game called Witch Trial, about plea-bargaining for fun and profit. I’d helped establish their Life-Sized games at conventions where players would become the pieces as part of an oversized implementation of the game, and Life Sized Witch Trial was part of our convention schedule. Toivo Rovainen ran those events, and rather than run the game as-is, the game was condensed to a story-telling game using the suspects and charges to accuse or defend in front of a delighted jury of gamers. And people LOVED it. Even though we weren’t playing the game, using a part of the game to illustrate the theme, and getting people excited about exploring the full game experience, became central to my philosophy of game promotion.
So a solo Illuminati experience should offer a game-play adjacent experience, in a short timeframe, and give players the curiosity to explore the full experience later. Developing games is easier with design goals (whether they be related to game mechanisms, theme, or salability). Other givens included no extra materials, variety in play experience, and something offering play tension throughout, with the opportunity for “little wins” throughout in case the big win doesn’t come through at the end.
What follows is a draft version of a solitaire game for Illuminati. Read it, and then we’ll come back and talk about how these mechanisms were developed, and give you some thoughts on how you might work with the rules in your playtests. Go ahead; we’ll just hang out here.
Rules
Illuminati: The Servants of Cthulhu Solitaire Challenge
You might not like those other Illuminati chaps, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t sit down for a glass of wine and discuss geopolitical philosophy with them. But the Servants of Cthulhu? All they want to do is watch the world burn. Seriously, screw those guys.
OBJECT OF THE GAME
Win in eight turns, or before the Servants destroy enough Groups to win.
REQUIREMENTS
One copy of Illuminati or Deluxe Illuminati. (If you don’t have a copy, we recommend Illuminati Second Edition, available now from your local store or Warehouse 23!)
THE ILLUMINATI
A few of the Illuminati have special rules in this scenario.
The Network: Drawing an extra card is now optional, and the extra card is drawn before your regular draw.
The UFOs: Must win with the 12 Groups condition.
The Discordians: You do not have Immunity to Straight or Conservative Groups.
The Bavarian Illuminati: No changes, but note that you will not use your Privileged Attack ability. Enjoy your Income and Power!
SETUP
Set the Servants of Cthulhu (SoC) aside; they’re your automa opponent. Also set the Society of Assassins aside (their special power doesn’t really work well with these solo rules). Randomly choose one of the other Illuminati and take income as you would during a normal setup. Reveal four Groups to the uncontrolled area, replacing any Specials drawn and returning Specials to the bottom of the draw deck.
ON YOUR TURN
Take income for your Groups, and then draw two cards (the Network draws an additional card IF THEY CHOOSE, before drawing the regular two cards.). Place Groups in the uncontrolled area. If you draw a Special, place it next to you but do NOT replace the card.
You may next buy additional card draws, as a single purchase (you can’t buy a card, look at it, and then buy more). The cost is 1MB for one card, 3MB for two cards, 6MB for three or 10MB for four. Groups drawn go to the uncontrolled area (keeping Specials).
Take your usual two actions as your would in a normal game. Specials may be used for their printed effect, or you may turn them in for either a single money transfer, or moving a Group, following the usual rules.
Apply your end-of-turn abilities (2 money transfers, Illuminati abilities), and then it’s the Servants’ turn. Those bastards.
SERVANTS OF CTHULHU TURN
Sum up all of the Power on the Groups in the uncontrolled area. This, plus the SoC Power of 9, and the Servants’ +2 to destroy, represents the Attack to Destroy that the SoC will attack with. If there is a Group with no Power, but Transferable Power, that Transferable Power is added to the attack. Any Groups that add to Attacks to Destroy add those bonuses as well!
Example: There are four Groups in the uncontrolled area: Loan Sharks (Power 5), California (Power 5), Libertarians (Power 1) and The Men In Black (Power 0/2). The AtD has a base value of:
9 (SoC) + 2 (SoC bonus for AtD) + 5 + 5 + 1 + 2 = 24.
The Group that the SoC are using to attack with (the “lead Group”) is the Group with the highest Power, applying all alignments from that Group. (Remember that Groups of Power 0 cannot be destroyed, and cannot be attacked by the Servants.) If there are multiple Groups tied for lead Group, use the Group (including bonuses) that gives the best attack on your Group. If tied, roll a die to randomly choose the lead Group.
Example: SoC has both California and Loan Sharks in the uncontrolled area, each with a Power of 5 (with no other Groups with equal or higher Power). If they were attacking the Gun Lobby in your Power Structure, California would be the lead Group, as it has two opposed alignments.
To determine the target, roll a d6:
1 — The SoC attacks the weakest Power Group on the NORTH side of your structure
2 — The SoC attacks the weakest Power Group on the EAST side of your structure.
3 — The SoC attacks the weakest Power Group on the SOUTH side of your structure.
4 — The SoC attacks the weakest Power Group on the WEST side of your structure.
5 — The SoC attacks the weakest Power Group ANYWHERE in your structure.
6 — Draw a card and add it to the uncontrolled area. If you draw a Special, return it to the bottom of the draw deck and draw again. Then, reroll the die.
If you have no Groups on the side of your structure that was rolled, there is no attack this turn.
If there’s a tie for the Power of the Group that will be attacked, tiebreaks are as follows:
- The Group farthest from the Illuminati will be attacked, then
- The Group that gives the Servants the best attack value, then
- Randomly choose one of the tied Groups with a die roll.
You may spend whatever money you could usually use to defend yourself, as well as applying any bonuses for proximity to your Illuminati and Group effects. Finally, roll dice to determine the success or failure of the attack.
If the attack fails: remove the lowest Power Group (including Power 0 Groups) from the uncontrolled area and place it under the Servants of Cthulhu card (if tied, roll a die to determine the removed Group). This is the Servants’ destroyed Group pile.
If the attack succeeds: remove the Group that was destroyed (following usual rules for resolving puppets and MB) and place it under the SoC card, in addition to the Group that led the attack in the uncontrolled area. This reduces your number of turns you have to win by one.
If the Servants of Cthulhu have eight or more Groups in their destroyed pile at the end of their turn, they have won. Otherwise, if you meet either your special victory condition, or 12 Groups in your Power Structure, you win!
Core to the Illuminati experience is the power structure of Groups that you build, snaking out from your core Illuminati as a flowchart of inevitable domination. The glory of the Preppers, controlled by the FBI, controlled by Texas, controlled by the Bavarian Illuminati, is the core of the humor in the game, as well as a fresh game mechanism to this day. Let’s keep all of that, but who should our enemy be?
All of the Illuminati factions in the game have a basic win condition (control some number of Groups in your power structure), and then a unique win condition. The Bavarians want Power, the Discordians want Weird-aligned Groups, the Bermuda Triangle wants each of the alignments in the game, and so on. One Illuminati stands out from the others: The Servants of Cthulhu. Instead of controlling some number of Groups, their victory condition involves destroying Groups from the game. While all of the real Illuminati are out trying their best to build noble, sustaining global power structures, the Servants are over in the corner setting things on fire and spray-painting summoning circles into the rubble. Seriously, screw those guys. Let’s make them the baddies.
Groups that are not part of your Power structure are part of the uncontrolled area, a pile of Groups waiting for masters. Typically, the Servants of Cthulhu find these Groups easy pickings for destruction, and so for a solo game, it makes sense to give the Servants access to these Groups, with players “saving” those Groups (and diminishing the power that the Servants have) by adding them to their power structure. In broad terms, this gives us an interesting engine: you as a sole Illuminati, building a power structure sufficient to fight off the Servants of Cthulhu before an inevitable resolution, one way or the other.
The Servants require 8 destroyed Groups in the regular game to win; that’s familiar, and as a “lose” condition for the player, easy to keep track of. So what to we need to do next to make this work?
Once you reduce a game down to the required parts, the next experience is trying to tune the elements to work, and there are three categories of ways to do so. The first, and usually the most elegant way, is to drop things that complicate the game, or don’t support your design mandates. For our solo game, we can safely drop attacks to neutralize, for example — if the uncontrolled area represents the Servants’ strength, a player is not going to want to add to that strength. By doing so, we unfortunately drop one of our Illuminati, as the Society of Assassins’ special ability is their extra strength at neutralizing Groups, and you want each of the usable Illuminati to maintain their flavor and theme.
Your next tool is modifying existing rules to make things work. We want things to be as familiar as possible, but reflect the reality of what we need to accomplish with the game design. The uncontrolled area typically grows by one card per player turn, but that doesn’t provide enough tension and power for our anarchistic villains. So, let’s change the draw to two cards, and in order to make sure players can get enough cards in play to reach their special conditions, allow them to buy additional cards (knowing that additional cards also increases the danger of the Servants’ attacks).
Finally, the most challenging type of development is adding rules and exceptions — not because it’s a hard thing to do, but because it’s the thing that will usually add the most complexity, the least memorable rules, and the danger of multiplying rules. Add a rule to fix something, find out that it works partially, but adding another rule will mostly fix that, and then if we add another — this is how you get a page of rules to handle edge cases that may be best dealt with by cutting something away.
At the end of every turn, the Servants of Cthulhu are going to attack to destroy a Group in your power structure, by summing all of the power in the uncontrolled area and adding their power and bonus for attacking. If we pick a Group in the uncontrolled area to lead the attack, we get the additional bonus of possible alignment mismatches (you’ll be going after those that help you, leaving opposed ones in the uncontrolled area ready to work against you). So how do we pick that lead Group? What happens if there are ties? What are the results of this attack, successful or otherwise? All of these create rules, and none of them exist in the game design currently. How do you reduce the contact points between this supplemental rule set and the rule set of the regular game?
Finally, for solo designs, there’s the question of difficulty. If you want the solo experience to be a marketing tool for the regular game, you probably want to tune the experience to be on the side of the players — a challenge, but giving players the thrill of ultimate victory more than the sting of defeat. But, with replayability comes familiarity, and the need to continue to challenge players. Is there a way to add difficulty without complexity for those who want more?
The Servants of Cthulhu Solitaire Challenge ruleset is a work in progress. The framework holds up under initial scrutiny, but there is a lot of work left to be done. Should the UFOs still be allowed to choose a victory condition? Does the current method of deciding on a target for the Servants’ attack make it too easy to defend your structure? Will ramping up difficulty by adding more cards to the uncontrolled area make the early game too difficult? There are lots of questions to be answered before we declare this a finished design, let alone a worthy one.
But, in this time of enforced distancing and disruption of leisure activities, we have a tremendous opportunity to recruit you, dear reader, as part of our playtest team. Approach this game with open eyes, and look for ways to improve it, remembering the design principles and development approach presented. At the least, you’ll have the opportunity to reacquaint yourself with one of the classics of game design; at best, you’ll be part of the crowdsourced team helping to give Illuminati future opportunities to connect with the gaming community. If you have feedback on the rules after playing, shoot an email to alexyeager@sjgames.com.
Alex Yeager works for Steve Jackson Games, used to work for others, and has been doing this game thing for a while now. Ceterum censeo Cthulhu esse delendam.
