Global Crisis: A Cooperative Game of Future Earth

Designer	C. Aaron Kreader
Publisher	Studio 9 Incorporated
Players	2-5
Playing Time	45-60 mins
Suggested Age	13 and up
Additional Info	316644/global-crisis-cooperative-game-future-earth http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/316644/global-crisis-cooperative-game-future-earth/forums/63

Overview
GLOBAL CRISIS blends cooperative game play with elements of hidden role games. Your leadership represents a major world superpower and a collective of nations. Can you overcome ancient challenges and bring about world peace? Global Crisis is a collaborative game (with a twist) where everyone is working to stabilize global chaos. The twist is that one player might be an agent of chaos. Yes, might. This potential saboteur raises suspicion and increases the challenge. Trust will have to be earned, hopefully before it is too late!

Game Play
If players collectively score enough points, they win. Players score by passing as many global policies as possible (before time runs out) to address the five overarching sets of Global Challenges. If a player is the "Agent of Chaos," that player can only win if the group scores in the lowest bracket possible—thus causing all other players to collectively lose.

This game can be played with 2 to 5 players. All players begin with five cards. In the initial rounds, players gather as much information as they can about the cards in the hands of other players. Next, they will aid each other to remove challenge cards from their hands, organize them by sets (color), and finally try to score on each set. There are five sets of challenges that can score. Scoring is based on how many cards within a set the group can collect and whether the group can form a unique policy on each set—all before time runs out. Time expires when the players have formed a policy for all five sets of challenges, or when a player attempts to draw a card from the deck, but the deck has run out.

Theme
Global Crisis::, Earth 2265, the world is on the edge of total annihilation. Natural, social, political, military, and corporate forces have pushed humanity to the brink. The words of a Persian mystic and prisoner who foresaw the future 400 years prior stands truer than ever before...

"O ye the elected representatives of the people in every land! Take ye counsel together, and let your concern be only for that which profiteth mankind, and bettereth the condition thereof . . . Regard the world as the human body which, though at its creation whole and perfect, hath been afflicted, through various causes, with grave disorders and maladies. Not for one day did it gain ease, nay its sickness waxed more severe, as it fell under the treatment of ignorant physicians . . ." —Bahá'u'lláh

In fits and starts the process of creating global stability has been emerging for eons. Now the world faces it's most dire hour. The super-science of catastrophic weaponry, imbalanced and exploited globalization, and the unlocked potentials of Mother Nature's wrath have all given rise to myriad horrific problems which require a host of powerful solutions.

Forces of light and dark battle openly in public discourse, secretly behind the closed doors of the powerful elite, and deep within the minds and hearts of all people. Despite those who cling to a world long gone, a consensus has formed among the world's peoples and great leaders: a new world must be made. Led by the charge of reason and fueled by a desperate hope, a rallying cry for peace is heard:

"The Great Peace towards which people of goodwill throughout the centuries have inclined their hearts, of which seers and poets for countless generations have expressed their vision, and for which from age to age the sacred scriptures of mankind have constantly held the promise, is now at long last within the reach of the nations." —From "The Promise of World Peace" by The Universal House of Justice

Is it too late to counteract eons of destruction? Can humanity set aside their petty squabbles, age old hatreds, and demagogue-stoked fears in order to bring about what is only dreamed of? And what of suspicions? Is everyone a trusted ally or do some lurk in shadow, attempting to plunge the world into a dark age of fallout and waste?

You are the rulers and leaders who will settle the fate of the world, for better or worse!

—description from the designer