When you’re staging a long-term protest — an occupation, if you will — you’re looking at sporadic fits of action amid long stretches of just standing or sitting around. So why not play a game?
Here are some games the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement might use to pass the time during those slow periods:
1. Fiasco: Players take the roles of people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control, whose get-rich-quick schemes go horribly wrong. Hilarity ensues.
2. The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow: In this game for 8 to 18 players, the majority of ordinary citizens are food for a handful of elusive predators who live among them. Every day the players argue about who should be brought to account, but usually end up burning other innocent townspeople at the stake. This fantasy scenario has no parallel in our world, and thus provides a great source of escapist fun.
3. Polaris: A gloomy role-playing game in which those charged with defending their society grow increasingly disillusioned with its widespread corruption, and self-destruct. Conflict resolution takes the form of highly ritualized verbal exchanges that draw from a list of stock phrases. Any similarity to cable news punditry is purely coincidental.
4. Pandemic: A cooperative board game in which players work together to contain and resolve a rapidly-spreading global crisis. The game is a reminder of the importance of having your shit together as a group.
5. Grey Ranks: Hey, it could always be worse.
