Druid Civilization Game

I dreamed that about a dozen couples had gotten together for a long gaming weekend in a secluded park area. There was one main cabin, with lofts and four full bedrooms, so a couple of couples would have to share the pull outs in front of the large fireplace in the sunken living room. We got ourselves settled in and I retrieved a card game. It was a civilization building game, that had a Celtic or Druid centric theme.

The goal of the game was to build a series of villages and then to link them up in a way that made them, as a whole, self sufficient. The world you played in was different every game, as there were cards that determined the layout of the world you had to settle. It was a competitive/cooperative game, as there were certain thresholds that needed to be met by all the players in order to survive the sorts of catastrophe's that might be pulled up out of the deck. We played a round, then everyone went outside to enjoy the woods and the various rocky hillsides nearby. As we were exploring the area, several of the people pointed out that the layout of the rocks and hills and cabin and little stand of woods was very much like our game. We decided to play a live action version of the game so broke up into teams of four. One team took the stand of woods near the house, another a nearby hill, and our team took the stand of rocks and the rocky caves in them about three hundred yards from the house and hills.

We used our cell phones to show the other teams the challenge cards, and ran back to the house to get new hands when needed. The first game went pretty well. So well we decided to do a second game, even though it was coming up on sunset. When everyone got back to the house, I collected up the cards to shuffle them up and redistribute them. I dropped them into one of my bags accidentally, and we started to gather them back up. Multiple hands in a tupperware tub at the bottom of a small bag made the process far more difficult than if I'd been allowed to do the task alone.

Sunset was rather faster than we anticipated, so we ended up working from flashlights. The cards had swollen up in the humid air, and the stack seemed to be nearly twice the size it was earlier. Fog started rolling in, and the group decided that we were hungry. I noted that there was a nice fire pit near the stand of rocks we'd taken as our village in the previous game, so we agreed to gather there and heat up dinner over an open fire. I decided that sitting around an open fire with greasy fingers wouldn't be good for a card game, so started packing the game up. The swollen cards wouldn't fit back in the box. I ended up taking my breakfast cereal out of its bag and using that to hold the box and all the extra cards. I agreed that we might need to find a different printer to make the next set of cards.

I remember next to nothing about the actual play of the game, other than the cards controlled resources, messengers, and challenges. The number of cards in your hand was based on the population of your village. In the live game, the players took the messenger and resource cards from group to group across the actual countryside. (Which is why we decided not to play after sunset.)