Café de Nuit

So I had the most interesting visit to my shop last Friday morning. A Buddhist regional leader (bishop?) of a particular sect of Buddhism for the US Midwest approached me about helping her create a board game/card game that is a teaching tool to introduce the concepts and processes of the Buddhist Wheel of Life and Death. The Wheel itself would serve as a game board. While it could be played as a family game, its purpose is to teach the esoteric concepts of Buddhism and how it is applied to handling the issues in life.

One thought, since Buddhism is about eschewing of material things, players begin the game by drawing a hand full of cards. What exactly the cards do, I'm not sure, but think it should allow for movement on the Wheel, drawing cards, discarding cards, acquiring or spending karma. When forced to deal with worldly issues, it means drawing more cards. The final goal is winning by ending with an empty hand.

Another thought, is that since pursuing the path to enlightenment is a selfless journey, the game has some cooperative aspects with interaction affecting multiple players in some of the cards game mechanics.

Anyway, this is still very early in development, but sounds like a very interesting thought experiment if nothing else. Once the game mechanics is fully evolved and I have a good idea on how best to represent the game board as well as the cards, we'll probably be looking at running a Kickstarter to fund it.

Thoughts?

Seems interesting. Keep in mind that spirituality aside, a game must also be fun.

From a purely game oriented perspective and not intending to offend any one's religious beliefs, the game has the basic feel like Uno. Obviously it will carry a greater message (lose all of your cards is pretty much it for Uno) so the cards themselves should have means to be discarded during your turn (maybe like Uno), but can also be tossed off to 'help' another player during their turn. If they cannot discard, then another could drop a card in their hand to prevent the original player from having to pick up another card from a draw pile. The cards (and the 3-5 card categories that they belong to) could be issues a budding Buddist could or would have faced. The categories could be titled like 'Everyday issues' or 'Family Needs', etc. The cards could either be specific instances in those general categories or solutions (maybe they are issues for the person whose turn it is, but solutions to give to that player in need from someone else). The Karma Point System could be a 'currency' of sorts instead with a player having to spend a point if they lack the card(s) they need and another player gets a point if they help out another player.

Not sure how this 'Wheel" works based on your description (maybe as a random event generator) or if it is supposed to have a greater inherent symbolic meaning.

Here's the gist of the Wheel, as explained to me by the Buddhist priestess (not completely, but what I know so far.)The hub of the wheel contains: rage, jealousy - the emotions that drive humanity and remain unchanged. The next layer of the wheel contains 3 positive aspects and 3 negative aspects. The next layer consists of the realms of the Wheel - heaven, asuras, human, animal, hungry ghost and hell, each associated with a specific set of sins - in the modern sense these are considered "states of mind". The outermost ring of 12 is the step by step process one must move through to deal with real world issues.

Once I get the textual explanation by the bishop, I'll have a better idea on the meaning of all the parts of the wheel and how they relate to each other.

Yes, I'm hoping this will be a fun game, as well as a teaching tool, with possible theraputic uses to help people work out problems in their life, but if it isn't a fun game, it won't work like it should.

It sounds interesting, at the very least. The fact that she approached you sounds like a bit of an honour to your fame as a game designer also.

Be sure and let us know when the Kickstarter begins.